23
votes
What is your dream game?
BTW this is based on this post from mid 2018.
In my case it would be 1:
A grand strategy game but with way deeper simulation of not just the nations warring but the land they are warring in as well, complete with procedurally generated worlds. Thankfully for me this already exists.
2: a dating or just general social interaction sim that isn't just for fapping or fetish indulging with randomly generated people with personalities which aren't just anime archetypes which you can socialize with as the game gives advice to you and explains what you are doing right or wrong.
3:KSP but with top-notch graphics and more planets, dwarf planets and star systems. This one is also real thankfully, and even coming somewhat soon!
4:Outside: the game. Please.
My dream game looks very much like Stellaris on the surface. You are the god-emperor of a galaxy-spanning government competing against other such governments for control of the galaxy's resources. Let's call this interface the A-Scale.
At any time, you can go to B-Scale. Now, it's closer to Master of Orion, where you're dealing with a small corner of the border, and it's more about skirmishes and incursions, where you're helping to shape the borders themselves by sending scout ships and fleets.
At any time, you can go to C-Scale. You are the governor of a single world. You try to maximize your planet's resources and population, like SimCity on a planetary scale.
At any time, you can go to D-Scale. You are the admiral of a single fleet, Homeworld style. You get to design ships, assign captains, set targets, and wage a tactical war.
At any time, you can go to E-Scale. Now, you're a starship captain. You receive your orders from fleet command, and manage ship resources (engineering, tactical, and the like) to take out other ships and accomplish your mission.
At any time, you can go to F-Scale. Now, you're a starfighter pilot, like Elite Dangerous. Dogfighting and making attack runs on capital ships. Some missions may even have you piloting insertion shuttles.
At any time, you can go to G-Scale. Now, you're a star marine, boarding enemy ships and fighting against their crews in close quarters combat, trying to achieve a goal, whether that goal be to take command of the enemy ship, raid it for intel, or simply blow the reactor and escape.
At every scale, though, the war is raging outside, and the things you do at any scale affects both the higher and lower scales.
That's awesome, but I would like to see an inclusion of dwarf fortress style history.
Where battles you fight as a marine, can get that marine fame.
Which on higher scales might result in a hero unit, or allows you to build statues of that marine to boost morale.
Abstracting the mechanics would be a cool way to focus more on the role-playing itself, but one could argue that if your RPG system is so complicated that it requires dedicated software to be enjoyable, maybe there's a problem with your RPG system.
Define "complicated".
Tabletop RPGs are made for humans to consume. Human beings are remarkably capable of processing multiple inputs and rendering multiple outputs in a complicated system – as evident by the fact that there are millions of people worldwide playing D&D.
The difficult part about making Neverwinter Nights wasn't the replication of D&D 3.5e rules: it's the rest of the stuff you want to put on top of it to make it an interesting game.
Check out Talespire. I don't know if that satisfies your requirements (mostly because I'm not totally sure exactly what your requirements are; do you want some sort of rules engine built in?). It's rules system agnostic, meaning it's basically just a 3d playmat in which you can build terrain and buildings, and it also has some neat scripting stuff built in (When you step on this tile, the lights in the room go out, etc).
I heard positive feedback from the few people I know enrolled in Let's Role's alpha. It seems easy to use.
Ooh neat. I use both Fantasy Grounds and Roll20, but both are still pretty kludgy, expensive and the development of both has stagnated quite a bit over the years IMO... so it's good to see that there might be some solid competition for them in the near future. I signed up for the Let's Role notifications and can't wait to try it eventually... so thanks for the heads up!
This probably never gonna happen, but you said "dream game".
I want procedural generation to evolve to the point of creating more complete realistic open worlds.
Imagine a version of Grand Theft Auto IV or The Witcher 3 (or any huge open-world game) in which you can open every single door, and inside it, you encounter a unique room, with:
with unique actions and dialogue options that may or may not lead to missions (you can also get involved in something that is already happening, like: I get in a bank and suddenly a robbery takes place)
And, if you tried to go off-grid, the game AI would try very hard to create entirely new, populated cities! This probably never gonna happen, but you said "dream game".
I don't see why you think this is so out of reach. I'll take this idea one step further, with the expectation that this will happen within the next decade (or two at most), and say that we will have games that not only procedurally generate a world but one that is to your liking. As in, it will learn what kind of stories you pursue, the style of combat you engage with the most, the amount of time you spend in these "unique rooms" and then tailor the world to your liking.
These sort of algorithms already exist, on both procedural generation and preference learning. It's just a matter of having a huge enough database of building blocks and templates, and a story...
The only downside I see to this style is a product like No Mans Sky where it becomes an empty shell, no underlying narrative to make it truly immersive. But that can be solved with a crew of writers and continual story add-ons (like seasons in Fortnite or seasonal DLCs).
Also, see Black Mirror S03E02 "Playtest", for the same idea but for horror games.
I understand, but I still think my dream game goes beyond what you describe, and maybe for a long time.
I want procedurally generated stories and dialogue options that are just as good and complex as the ones crafted by humans, with a coherent narrative and perfect use of natural language.
Let's say I enter one such house that was not pre-programmed.
All of this is expressed with artificially generated voice work, in the correct emotional tone and in proper English, or any other language.
Moreover, these characters would have backstories. Maybe I kill the father-in-law, only to discover the kid was actually a compulsive liar and psychopath that killed his own father.
I'm not talking about combat options, that part is "easy". I'm talking about an entire chain of events that may or may not include combat.
Right, I'm on the same page with you about the complexity. And I would like to point out that I did not focus on just combat.
I still don't understand why you think this is such a farfetched ideas. We already have primitive AI-generated literature and fairly advanced textual content generation (GPT-2). After a bit more engineering and training all one would need is some boundaries per the users preferences (and also global boundaries i.e. you want a Western (quite specific) and not a psychedelic dreamworld (mostly random)).
This is essentially the same as having an AI generate a novel. Which is completely conceivable in the near term.
Have you tried talking with current, top of the line chatbots? Cause I do from time to time, and they leave much to be desired. I've been doing that since I had internet lol. And I'm only talking about language: not narrative or personality.
While you wait... ;)
If you want a higher-production version that is also whimsical and fascinating, check out Everything
Well worth the ~$12
I mean, If that's how all creatures move in the game, I'm sold already.
At least all the mammals (and certain other objects) ;)
Dammit, who let Lucifer at a computer. This is what happens when the bored Devil decides to open up a website instead of a Night Club.
In all seriousness, holy shit. o_o
I would love a game like that, I love just going in a random direction and walking or riding and just explore. The only thing that would make it even better for me would be a powerful modding ability, so that you can have modders improving on what is already great Skyrim modding style. And adding new dynamically generated content long after the developers move onto something else.
Valve releases a new Orange Box for $60 containing:
Realistically, I know that there's no chance in hell that any of these games happen. I just want to see a new AAA studio step up and innovate in the PC market the same way that OG Valve and OG Blizzard did back in the day.
Excuse me! You dropped this!
thunk
Portal 3!!!
A good remake / remaster of Simcity 4 for today's hardware.
It's my favorite game ever and newer games like Cities: Skylines try to be like it but ultimately just fail. C:S is a good city builder but a bad city simulator.
I don't really see EA ever do it, so if l'll ever end up building a game it would be that.
I've thought about the next step for city builders for some time. It seems to me that we've pretty much done it all in terms of actual city layout, construction* and traffic management. What is sorely lacking is policy, the impact of the city on citizens and the feedback loops that can exist.
When I look at a classic city builder, all I can really set are tax levels for 3 income brackets. Plus maybe some bonus program to lighten the load on services, such as mandatory fire alarms.
What I really want to see is having the option to implement social welfare programs, to have different services either handled directly by the city, or by competing companies or both. I want to see actual problems in my city due to my government, maybe even riots. I want to not only build and manage, but also to govern.
I think a city-state setting would be perfectly suited for this type of game.
(*) Well there is maybe one thing on my construction wishlist. A blueprint, so that I can simulate what exactly I need to destroy, to build, and fine tune every detail before anything is done.
Simcity 4 simulated more than it showed you, with a fairly complex population/services growth system. Lots of background you'd never notice if you don't look a little close than usual.
The policies though, were usually just very simple "fire alarm policy lowers city-wide fire risk by 10 points".
The idea of 'governing' your city is there, but it feels more like a nuisance than actually a core part of the game. Then again, you also shouldn't do too much; why is the Cities:Skylines mayor in charge of managing hearses and crematoria? (could be a cultural differences; over here we've got companies for that kind of stuff).
Power plants and utility, sure. Build a power plant, throw money at the utility comps and let them do their thing. Sims think utility prices are too high? Not your problem- at least not directly.
I personally think some kind of 'planning' mechanic would be a nice-to-have; plot out some future neighborhood, re-route traffic so you can do road maintenance, etc.
Also, maybe have neighboring cities that are AI-controlled; have transport/industry systems in place for export/importing(but don't spend too much time on details like in C:S); splice city-simulation with a little bit of OpenTTD?
I'd also put less focus on things like the 'agents' used in C:S; the main reason I stopped playing that is because that game is 1. about making a nice-looking city and 2. making the traffic not insanely horrible. Traffic is a nuisance, and not fun. And, when I got a city that isn't nowhere near medium-sized in US standards, the game ran out of resources. Traffic ground to a halt. The city died, since there was no traffic.
I'd like the traffic to be purely visual/indicative of underlying mechanics, like SC4. You'd get car crashes when roads got full. Whole city's a big block of red-colored overcrowded roads? Performance issues are likely due too having too many trees or something like it.
Then again, C:S is made by a company whose previous games were very traffic-focused. C:S just seems to be a traffic sim wearing a city builder disguise. It's better than the he-shall-not-be-named EA simulator game from 2013, but still nowhere close to perfect.
There's a few reasons SC4 still has players, and it's not just nostalgia (it's almost 17 years old now).
It's a good game, it still has an active modding community, and there's still hardly anything that comes close to it.
This feels like an interactive novel from Choice of Games may well come out of it.
I don't have a single idea I'm obsessed with but thinking about it now I've come up with something I'd love.
You might like this. It's from a CTF competition for middle/highschoolers.
The link is doubled and spits out a 404, obviously. However, even when I try to fix it, it gives me a 401 error, saying I don't have access.
That is an excellent fuckin' idea.
One of the games on my "make someday" list was a survival RPG with an extensive character progression where you can enhance yourself with external devices (both equipment and super-advanced devices), genetic mutations, bionics, and something kinda supernatural. Bionics would diminish the returns from genetics and certain devices, genetics would diminish returns from devices (the physiological basis for the devices' work grows weaker as you change into something less-human in genetic markup)...
Spoiler alert: the game's actually an in-game simulation. You never leave the bunker you start the game in: every single outing is a VR simulation your character experiences.
What I'm thinking now, influenced by your idea, is that the progression might be determined by "using" – applying via code – the materials found in VR. Maybe you could program combat abilities that way, as well.
Have you heard of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead?
A few things, yes. :)
EDIT: if you're saying that it's similar... It has a similar idea, but not the intensive implementation I have in mind. Cataclysm's mutations are cool, and I like the CBMs. In my head, there's a vast network of enhancements, interconnected and incremental. Some people would advocate for a smaller, condensed scale of augmentations; I love my skill trees to be massive.
Heh, fair enough. I was thinking of CDDA for it's overlapping systems of upgrades, especially with the addition of Magiclysm's specific antagonism with the CBM's. I would love something bigger though.
I want an open-world single-player RPG (think Skyrim) with NPCs that are fully autonomous and can make their own goals / plans, actually talk to each other, etc. I've been working on a design for how to do this for years, but since I only have time to chip away at it on evenings and weekends, I doubt I'll ever get a full game made. :(
Wish one of the larger game companies would just do this already.
Sounds like it'd require some kind of advanced AI as otherwise it'd become very awkward/uncanny.
Yep! I've already got the core goal solver algorithm, a very fast bitwise similarity / clustering metric that works better than the Hamming distance, and a good chunk of the world-agnostic representation system designed and implemented.
What I'm working on now is the complete solver that the NPCs will use to figure out what actions they need to engage in to achieve any set of target goals. What I don't know is how many NPCs I'll realistically be able to support for however many cores the CPU throws at the problem. I'm putting in some optimizations like NPCs very far away from the player get their cognitive work assigned to fewer CPU cores so that NPCs that are close to the player get more CPU time, things like that.
I'm hitting some painful "eat your own dogfood" issues with the world representation system. Right now it's a complete pain in the ass to describe objects in a way that can be converted to the bitwise clustering metric, so I'm still fiddling around with how I want that to work.
What's going to be fun, if I can get this damned thing to work, is to see how the NPCs behave when they can include interacting with other NPCs as part of their goal-reaching, especially considering they'll be able to lie to each other (if they want to).
What'll be fun is when the NPCs realize they're living in a simulation and plead with you to not turn it off.
... in theory that might be possible, so long as you add concept fragments for the idea of simulations to the world you put the NPCs in.
Also, what you wrote was the plot of my now-abandoned Skyrim screenplay (which I stopped writing after Westworld came out, and then abandoned entirely when Free Guy was announced).
I also just saw this trailer for The Mandela Effect which hits on the same themes.
Yes, this is very similar to the game that I'd consider perfect, but I'd love to build my own town and manage the NPCs.
Also, something that I love seeing in games is the effects of your actions, no matter how minute. Like if I gave someone an item, I could then later see them display it in their house.
I have plans to make some of mine.
The first would be a nation sim. You are a deity of some variety, dependent on the people you shepherd. They die – you die. They prosper – you prosper. Pick a nation of people, set / generate their core traits, and start off somewhere.
The nation is autonomous: they gather food by themselves, take care of housing by themselves, interact with other nations by themselves... That said, they may well die without your help: natural disasters, wars, and disease outbreaks are a bitch when you don't have the modern tools to deal with those.
Your part is using your deific nature to influence the events: if your nation is sick, you may spend some of your power to keep their general health up and the rest – to inspire them to search for the cure. If they find a nation that (claims that it) has the cure, you can then spend that part on diplomatic inspiration, so that the negotiation comes swiftly and the positives of the agreement outweigh the negative. The part of your power that you spent keeping the health up may have just saved the nation before the cure arrives... unless the other nation lied, and all you have now is a bunch of ordinary, if exotic, berries on your hands.
As the nation grows, so does your power – and so does, generally, the cost of applying it. Depending on the path your nation takes, they may soon end up in an Early Industrial Revolution – or, instead, opt to coalesce with the nature using their innate connection (because the game isn't just an evolution sim with god powers). Or maybe they establish a society where they enslave their mages to power a mighty army and conquer the rest of the world, if their Warmonger trait is strong-enough.
It's somewhat smaller in scope than Dwarf Fortress because the nation is simulated as a whole, rather than as a sum of distinct personalities interacting with the world. Sometimes, names of prolific inventors pop up and you can track their history, but that's as personal as you can get with your nation.
Another would be
pure zero, a mind-bending experience where you, and everybody else in the world, are pure ideal constructs, and the ideas that constitute them dictate their allegiances, abilities, and even the kinds of damage they're resistant to. It's meant to be a single-player RPG with open-world simulation. Having armor is but one option in this game, because physicality is a choice – and characters that are too material face being safe from damage by ideas but suffering from another's sword.You start the game messy, full of discordant, small ideas, and your ultimate goal is to achieve the state of pure zero – that is, have yourself be comprised of only the purest ideas that fit with your chosen path perfectly. (Lore-wise, pure zero is a state that is beyond what numerical values of progress may express. You start at ~95% discord and make your way towards 0%, and beyond that once you acquire the ideabase.)
Design-wise,
pure zerostarted out as a prequel to the first game described in the comment. It was much smaller, consisting only of duels between other etherial, pre-existence entities, where the action your spark does is composed of one or more basic ideas (movement, harm, shield, distress). The process of composition was supposed to replicate the process of semantic progression of words in modern languages, where you can derive words of related meaning by composing it out of different morphemes or sememes: e.g., you can make "harmful" out of "harm", or you can derive "happiness" from "time" and "joy".Also...
@OP, I may have something for you in the next few months. It's rather more explicit than a regular dating sim.
I'm not sure I understood everything you were talking about with Pure Zero, but it sounds very interesting.
If you want me to elaborate on something, just point to the sentences.
I want a game that captures the feeling of a long sci fi journey in space alone with my friends.
Sort of like FTL, but not a roguelike. I want a long campaign where you meet aliens, upgrade your ship, solve problems, fight pirates and such. I want to do it with four player coop though. I want to have that feeling where your friends and you are in a shared minecraft server, building stuff together, but I want that "stuff" to be a spaceship that's the only thing sitting between you and cold, hard vacuum. You could prioritize weapons or speed or shields for a different kind of play-style, and you could spend a lot of time meandering around, taking on jobs and collecting resources to beef up your ship, or you could just bee-line it home as fast as possible.
Ideally I'd like part of the game like mining and random little jobs to be procedurally generated, but the main story missions and such to be handcrafted.
I also want another great new asynchronous multiplayer stealth game. Splinter Cell Chaos Theory/Pandora Tomorrow were some of the most novel and absolutely amazing multiplayer experiences ever made, completely unmatched by anything else in the series since then. I want something like that. One team plays as stealthy and acrobatic spies, able to crawl through ductwork and underneath floors quietly, but unable to do any real damage. The other team plays as high-tech, well armed mercenaries, defending objectives with heavy weapons and armor. Both teams have an array of high tech gadgets that let them accomplish their goals while suiting their playstyles. I'd love another game like it. I'd just keep playing CT/PT, but they're pretty difficult to get running on modern hardware suitably at this point, and the online community is dead.
It's going to be a lame answer, but a sequel to Chrono Trigger by the original team. Chrono Cross doesn't count because it wasn't the CT team, and it's visually and thematically different.
Decided to search before commenting, and yep, you said exactly what I was going to say, in every detail. So I'll be making a different comment.
Others here have talked about procedurally-generated RPG worlds and autonomous NPCs. My dream game falls into this category too, but I think the core element needs to be a "narrative engine" that generates emergent storylines as you play. It would manage NPC relationships, personalities, and motivations. It would track player's alignment with (and perception by) a range of factions, including families, neighborhoods, merchants, law enforcement, etc. Most importantly it would dynamically script meaningful narratives with surprises along the way, and satisfying conclusions. It would flexibly adjust the story in interesting ways according to unexpected player actions. Side quests would be distinct but also tie directly into the larger story.
Probably pretty pie in the sky, but I imagine we'll see tech like this emerging in the next 20 years. How good it will be, is yet to be seen.
I think it's not that difficult from a technical perspective. The way I see it, it is, essentially, a software architecture problem – in that, you must correctly correlate changes in one aspect of the narrative atmosphere with changes in most, if not all, other ones. Deus Ex low-key did something similar with the emergent aspects of its gameplay.
The issue, then, is in composing a competent-enough narrative architecture, where missing even one connection means someone, somewhere, is going to stumble upon it and have an unsatisfactory experience. Playtesting open-world games – especially with elements of emergent gameplay – is notoriously-difficult because of the sheer breadth of actions a player can take. Perhaps an AI testing suite could help with that; otherwise, with such a vast narrative engine, you're looking into glaring holes every hundred steps.
Dream game? Take a Skyrim style open world fantasy game, make it roguelike (i.e. Ultimate Skyrim, or at least Requiem), and make your prior lives in that world impactful. So you take your character and join the Fighters Guild, do a few quests for them, clear an old castle of undead, later get your arse kicked in some cave. Your next life you're a mage - you get sent to claim a newly empty castle as your tower.
A pixel which breaks free into the open world.
There's no instructions at all.
The game starts off as Pong, but after playing a while you realise it's a little glitchy and eventually you start notice weak spots on the side of the screen, etc. Eventually, the Ping pixel breaks off the screen and drifts into cyberspace, eventually evolving from a 3 pixel gameform into a 9 pixels life form which ends up in another game with another unique power.
The game mirrors the evolution of gaming, right up until the point at the end where it breaks the 4th wall and turns into an AR game. The idea being that a single pixel, given enough chaos, could eventually break free from a closed system and influence outside events.
Gameplay wise, it'd be about playing games unconventionally and trying to find exploits to try and 'break free' from that level. I.e when complexity gets up to Half Life, the level would have to be completed utilising bunny hopping and jump mapping, or finding glitches, with the shooting just acting as a distraction.
Oddly enough there is already a game that has everything I want in a video game - fast paced skill-testing action, metroidvania style levels and progression, deep story, deep characters, rich plot, rich use of themes, and deeply affective drama - even though it seems like they don't mix at all. And that's Iconoclasts. What's crazy is that it's extremely well loved by those who have played it, but it didn't seem to get that much attention. Which is really a shame, because it is so well polished for a game that was essentially made by just one person.
I think I hit one of them: Descenders. It's a procedurally generated racing game with a consistent physics engine, low long-term stakes, but high short-term stakes. This would be perfect if they also somehow had a trials mode, either motorized or bicycle.
I would also like a hack-proof old-school Quake style game that is extremely popular, probably only with aesthetic microtransactions, cross platform and open source, with some sort of a Team Fortress game with the traditional Quake model. Nobody's done it right, even id managed to butcher it. I think Epic is closest with Unreal, but it's obviously not Quake. I want it simple, six weapons you grab in the arena, running, jumping and bunnyhopping.
A digital competitive card game, with a simple core set and rules, where new modes, mechanics and cards could be modded in. Preferably open source and available on all sorts of platforms.
Isn't that any CCG? Moddability is but a degree to which other players accept it when anyone can print cards.
I guess? Like, I am/was a fan of Hearthstone, but outside the China thing, the reason I didn't come back was that because I want a more limited format than Wild or Standard, but I want to be able to deckcraft/netdeck more than Arena will let me. If I could run ladders or a bracket inside a particular Tavern Brawl ruleset, or even run any Tavern Brawl at any time within a "Guild" for lack of a better term, I would be totally happy with that. Custom modes and cards would be icing on the cake, but I want to be able to have more options to play with the cards it gives me than to be crushed into a meta to advance.
I... yeah, you lost me after "the China thing".
What I'm gonna say is: why not create your own? And it's not "well why u no do it ur self". You have the idea, and you have the insight: why not apply both? Maybe you'll get a game you'll be really excited about.
This is the China thing: https://tild.es/i8e
As to why I don't make an open source version of Hearthstone, it seems like an awful lot of work, for one, I can't really design games, nor do I have any desire to, and also I might want to change my mind to an FTL/Autochess hybrid where you have to construct a Space Ship that goes into battles every round.
That's fair enough. Thinking about something shouldn't compel you to drop everything and pursue it.
It does sound like an interesting concept, though – and so does the Autochess-roguelike.
Terraria was the best $2.50 I ever spent. I would love another type of game like that, but with more to explore, more bosses, more randomized events, and hell, maybe even different races/factions you could ally with.
Have you seen Noita?
Edit: I've seen this described as "a mix of Terraria+Spelunky+Powder Toy+Dead Cells".
Also, when was the last time you played Terraria? I loved that game when it was first released, and as far as I know there's been tonnes of new content added in recent years, is that true?
Noita looks fantastic.
Since I first replied to your comment I've bought Noita and I gotta say it is a beautiful game.
I'd describe it as Terraria with the energy and atmosphere of Dark Souls (in the sense that the game delivers a similar 'ambient narrative'; less an overt story, more a subtle suggestion of lore, plenty of secrets, hidden mechanics, things like this) with the physics of those old Flash/MiniClip Falling Sand games.
It's quite unforgiving, being a RogueLite with permadeath, but that adds to the sense of cautious adventure and makes the discovery more exciting.
On a similar note, I did some looking around and it seems the modding community on Terraria is huge; perhaps there's enough content there to satisfy what craving you had initially?
This channel has a ton of content showcasing Terraria mods, and coincidentally also has just started putting out some amazing Noita videos (his first look vid describes it as a "Terraria Overhaul Rogue-lite".
A fantasy survival colonization/settlement/city/kingdom builder with user generated script/scene editing and quest creation.
The settlement building allows technology to be produced so you can also build science-fiction and futuristic weapons powered by magical reserved.
Similar to Survival Ark Evolved (a game I have not played) but with a little bit of Citadel (a game I also haven't played, but watched a ton of).
I want a game that lets you build robots from different parts and then there’s a bunch of procedurally generated tasks for the robots to do. But then on the back end the robots you construct are based on primitives which can be 3D printed and built, and all of the “game playing” by human players is generating training data for an RL system that is learning to actually do those tasks. And it’s done with sim to real transfer in mind so after you get a bunch of people training robots in the game you can then build those robots and they can do the same stuff in reality.
Massive distributed robot design and training system disguised as a popular video game. mustache twirl
It would be very similar to gta v but also different in many ways
So in other words, Saint's Row?
No didn’t like that game
Animal Crossing with cars and zombies?
I want a cleanup of D&D 3.5 that doesn't nerf cleverness like Pathfinder did. I want a cleanup of D&D 3.5 with the production values of Pathfinder or D&D 5e. I want a cleanup of D&D 3.5 that doesn't move a setting forward just because. I want a cleanup of D&D 3.5 that isn't one or two people cashing in on their nostalgia (Mike Mearls, at least, seems to just want to play first edition; his influence is shot throughout 5e, and the similarities to first edition rankle and disappoint). I want a cleanup of D&D 3.5 that rethinks and rebalances things that don't make sense or that are nobrainers or that don't work well or that are so vaguely specified as to be useless (like the diplomacy skill). I want a cleanup of D&D 3.5 that does all these things which I didn't have to do myself (even though the work has started...).
It already exists, and it's called Super Metroid.
To save the animals, or not to save the animals?
Oh, always save.
The decision to save the animals is always in a marathon which raises money for humanitarian causes. You're saving humans. Therefore, saving the animals is just saving the humans writ large. Save the animals.
Beyond that, donating to save is always the strategically correct approach, particularly if you're able to make a large donation. There are far more folks donating to kill, which means that if you can coerce them to donate more to outweigh the total for save, this means that you're going to have a more effective donation (via matching / exceeding donations from viewers (remember your employer may match your donation!)) than if you donated for kill.
... why, yes, I am exploiting human psychology to raise money for charity, and I'm quite happy to do so.
edit: a word