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Imaginary games that you'd like to play but they will never exist

Viata

Arcane
Joined
Nov 11, 2014
Messages
9,886
Location
Water Play Catarinense
A good horror RPG in an urban setting. I just want something that is not fucking medieval, fantasy, cyberpunk or post-apocalyptic shit.
yeah, there are so many good horror rpgs in other settings.
They would suck if there was any, though. Tired of those settings already.
 

SharkClub

Prophet
Patron
Joined
May 27, 2010
Messages
1,540
Strap Yourselves In
Thief but you're a professional arsonist hired to scam insurance companies, and the imsim emergent gameplay elements are extremely fire-based.
 
Joined
Nov 23, 2017
Messages
4,120
I'd always thought a LOTR RPG styled like Betrayal at Krondor would be great. But instead the LOTR games we got were action RPGs. And if they made them today we'd get black Aragorn and Chinese Gandalf.

I would've also loved to see a 2.5D remaster of Tyrian.

It’s not Betrayal at Krondor style combat, but there is The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age.

Kind of weird EA never did any more RPGs like it. The Third Age would’ve come right at the end of the Square Electronic Arts deal. So they wouldn’t have the income they were previously getting from publishing SquareSoft titles here, and apparently Third Age did well. But they never followed it up with more similar types of games.
 

Hagashager

Educated
Joined
Nov 24, 2022
Messages
516
It sold decently on the clout of the LOTR trilogy, but as a standalone game was seen as pretty poor. It suffers from the same issue as virtually all LOTR's stories not involving the Fellowship: there is nothing more interesting than the exploits of the Fellowship.
 

kinzadza

Scholar
Joined
Sep 5, 2018
Messages
121
Location
Samoa
starcraft 2 from old blizz

baldurs gate 3 from old bioware

kotc 3 in unreal engine

bonus: old republic mmo with jedi academy 2 combat and rpg stats
 

Disciple

Savant
Joined
Feb 18, 2018
Messages
274
Fantasy-themed X-COM.

Offline Conan action-RPG with Gothic 1/2's combat and TES II-III's best systems.

A game that blends Patrician III with some of the micro-managing elements of The Guild.
 

DJOGamer PT

Arcane
Joined
Apr 8, 2015
Messages
7,523
Location
Lusitânia
Ultimate Devil May Cry
3 characters - Nero, Vergil, Dante
Each with its separate 10 mission campgain (not counting their prologue mission, where the game provides all tutorials)


Campgain
Continues shortly after DMC5 ending, no big world ending threat, just the Sons of Sparda cleaning up the world of all demons that escaped from hell because of Urizen's Qliphoth
3 distinct campgain styles:
- Nero's campgain is a series of isolated levels (like DMC5), justified as him taking up various different jobs, so each level could be set in whatever location of the settings world - including revisiting locations previous games in the series, like Fortuna, Vie de Marli and even Red Grave City again
- Vergil's campgain would a linear sequence of conected levels (like DMC2+4), this would be justified as Vergil going down to hell to seal it for good as redemption for his past bullshit
- Dante's campgain would take place in a big interconnected location (like DMC1+3)

At least 15 Secret missions missions for each campgain and they all reflect what they are going for, so:
- Nero's secret missions could be called Contracts and they would essentially be smaller jobs (also all taking place in other parts of the world, we don't see in the main levels)
- Vergil's secret missions could be weird pocket dimensions for him to seal shut
- Dante's secret missions could be optional mission objectives and extra levels


Enemies
Not a whole lot of bosses, 3 solid ones for each campgain would be enough
The differences in boss behaviour between DH, SoS and DMD would be even more pronounced
Plus Dante, Vergil and Nero would also be bosses (but now Vergil would use all his weapons)

The same enemies from DMC5, but with the following changes:
- Chaos replaced with Mega Scarecrow from DMC4 (but thougher and with new atacks)
- Hell Caina replaced with Abyss from DMC3
- significantly tweaked Hell Judecas
- more dynamic Empusas (or even raplced with new enemies, yet similar in function), enemies

Along with returning tweeked enemies such as:
- Frosts
- Fallen
- Shadows (more like in 5)
- Griffons (also similar to 5)
- Golems (these are from 2, but they could share properies from Nightmare in 5)
- Basilisks
- Cutlass (but only as Judeca summons in Nero's campgaign)
- Alto+Bianco Angelos


Gameplay changes
Nero's changes would lie mostly on the Devil Breakers, in order to further expand his gameplay
- Breaker Switcher, the player can now switch between Devil Breakers with the D-Pad/Num Pad
- redesigned Devil Breakers, still 8 in total but there's new ones, old ones have new properties and some might even change Nero's moveset (with this the sky is the limit and Nero could achieve a greater level of complexity while still remaining the begginer friendly character)
- DT Explosion like in DMC3
- Exceed does fire damage and Max-Acting produces an AoE fire trail
- also more enemy attacks that can be buster countered

Vergil would be the most changed character
Nerfed when compared to his incarnation in 4 and 5 as he now isn't a character designed primarly for LDK, with Concentration playing a much more important role
- no World of V
- SDT would not regenerate him, but it would increase his speed, lock Concentration at max and grant him a few new moves other than the ultimate attacks
- Doppelganger now has the added feature of switching to the weapon the player had equipped when the Doppelganger was last reset
- damage with low Concentration is similiar to Dante and Nero's normal damage levels
- Concentration Level 1, Vergil can only use the Yamato and base Summoned Swords (though they're slower)
- Concentration Level 2 he cand now use Judgment Cuts and Teleportation
- Level 3 he can use the Mirage Edge and lock-on Summoned Swords moves
- Level 4 he can use the Punch/Kick (this would be justified as him partially transforming his fists and feet) and DT Doppelganger summon is instant (instead of being locked in that summoning animation)
- Level 5 weapons gain various properties, the air taunt is replaced with Quick Cuts and DT now also transforms him to his old DT form which would grant regeneration and hyper armor
- finally, and this is another big change, instead of weapon switching, all of his 3 weapons would mapped to singular buttons (making his gameplay more fluid, despite the overall speed decrease)

Dante would remain mostly the same
- just add in inertia for Guard Flying
- add in two new Devil Arms (one gun like Artemis and Nightmare-Y, one new melee weapon)
- keep both the Sparda and Rebellion (justify with a level taking place in the past or as an illusion), but they both have very pronounced different properties between themselves and the DSD
- more properties for his moves in DT
- as a new gameplay feature, DT Distortion, basically if the player hits the DT button just as his attack lands in an enemy, that attack's damage is multiplied by x2 or x3 and it also leaves Dante DT transformed for just an instant (like 2 seconds), this action still wastes a bar of DT, but also grants an immediate S


Extra Content
Last, but not least, is the whole slew of side content to keep this game replayable past the 100 hour mark:
- the selectable battle tracks are hidden troughout the levels
- at least different 5 skins per character (Super characters don't count) all locked behind secret challenges
- also to mirror Super chars, there's now Human chars which prevent the use of demonic power (so no DT for all and no Devil Buster for Nero) but result in a 1.5x point multiplier at the end of the mission
- expanded Void mode (more info not just total damage dealt, the ability to select enemy behaviour, ability to spawn in multiple enemies and in general more variables to play with)
- Turbo Mode (the traditional 1.2x) and Super Turbo (1.3x)
- Must Style (can only do damage with S rank)
- Must Fly (during fights, the floor slowly damages the pc and decreases style faster)
- Divergence (play a character's campgaign, including secret missions, with one of the other 2 characters)
- Legendary Dark Knight
- Boss Rush (instead of it being a boring mission, just let it be it's own thing ; 3 difficulties - DH, SoS, DMD ; similar to DMC3 mission 18, a space where the player can choose which Boss he wants to fight next, but with locked floors so the better fights can fought last ; there's a Divinity Statue allowing the player to heal between fights, in which case it automatically prevents an S rank ; not just the Bosses from this game, but also the best bosses from the previous games, gloriously updated)
- Bloody Palace (including a Co-Op version up to 3 players, which increases enemy count and pairs up bosses)
- Infinite Palace (no Bosses, just waves and waves of enemies until the player drops dead ; also with Co-Op up to 3 players)
- PvP (multiple arenas, choice to have enemies spawning in, up to 3 players)
- Challenge Mode (the player selects from multiple pre-made arenas, then he customizes its "challenge" how he sees fit ; place his own spawns, though some arenas don't allow for boss fights ; can have specific properties such as time, must fly, must style, no revives, no co-op, no Devil Breakers, no DSD, no Judgment Cuts, Human chars only, etc. ; each challenge generates a seed, which players can then share to play each others Challenges)


Ultimate Elder Scrolls
Setting
Set in multiple smaller regions of many countries, instead of one entire country
In this case, I would set it along the land surrounding the Abecean Sea
Which includes various regions of Cyrodill, Hammerfell, Valenwood and the Summerset Isles:
- the Gold Coast
- the Broken Coast
- the Drowned Coast
- Hew's Bane Peninsula
- Stirk Isle
- Stros M'Kai
- and the eastern side of the Auridon Kinhold
Action takes place either during or after the 4th Era's Great War, the campgain lasts for at least 1 full in-game year (but 2 would be cooler) - after which the game ends (regradless of whatever there's still content to be done)


World
Along with day and night cicle, we also have weather system (including extreme weather such as sandstorms and sea storms) and seaonal cycle (spring, summer, autumm, winter - and each impacts the world and gameplay
Enviromental physics similar to BotW, with an expanded Temperature system

Though economy, the player needs to save money - also due to the context of time and place, there's at least 3 different currencies (with the Septims and Aldmeri currencies coming in distinct tiers, like bronze, silver and gold)

No level scalling of any kind - both items, rewards are enemies are all fixed (there can be some RNG, but always small)

At least 3 main quest factions
Guilds Quests can only be completed by their targeted Class - no mages in Warrior's Guild and so on
All factions have distinct relations towards one another


Gameplay
3 difficulty settings:
- Hard, the one the game was primarly designed around, can only save at safe spots (beds and camps) and dungeons can have checkpoints (depending on size)
- Hard with Survival mode
- Casual, less aggressive enemies with weaker damage, easier combat encounters, more abundant rewards, simpler quest objectives, can save anywhere

A proper Action Role-Playing Game
Not this timid, generic cRPG/aRPG mix shit Betheseda has been doing since Oblivion


7 Attributes
10 levels each (except for LUCK)
Char creation starts with level 3 on all attributes, save for the two Racial attributes where the PC stats with level 4
The player will be able to increase his attributes on every 5 levels - with the main quest providing 5 addicional attribute points at the conclusion of specific story chapters
ENDURANCE - Maximum Fatigue, Poison/Diease/Temperature Resistance, Health gain per level, Recovery, Lung, small Physical/Elemental Resistance
STRENGTH - Carrying Capacity, some Fatigue gain, hand-to-hand damage, small weapon damage (including degradation), reduces Fatigue of physical actions, small Poise, break locks
DEXTERITY - ease of increasing physical skills, small character movement speed/acelaration, projectile reloading speed, primary requeriment for various rogue skills
ASTUTENESS - initial disposition, ease to increase disposition, lowers speechcraft/barter requeriments, new dialog choices, requeriment for "influence" magic, ability to notice "secrets" (become highligthed), ability to examine items and certain world objects
INTELLECT - memory, spell requeriment, ease of learning mage skills, Concentration limit
WILLPOWER - resistance to all sort of magic effects, small Health/Fatigue/Diease, Concentration regeneration, Belief
LUCK - changes odds of dice rolls and modifies the campgain itself (for example: more (dis)favourable item/enemy placement ; better rewards ; new world events ; less favourable weather events ; etc.)

Luck skill has 5 levels - cursed, unlucky, neutral, lucky, blessed
The player CAN NEVER permanently increase the attribute level.
Rather in char gen, each character starts on Neutral and if the player so chooses he can roll the dice to change this level.
The catch being that, once the die is cast, the player will never get "neutral" again (only one of the other four levels)
Plus the dice odds favor the negative levels
And finally the player can't re-roll (and to make matters more annoying for powergamers, the Luck roll only happens at the end of the tutorial level)

You may have noticed that I didn't mention Magicka anywhere
That's because it's been redesigned into Concentration
It works much like its DMC inspiration - a meter that either fills or drains depending on the PC's action and status, with higher Concentration meaning more power
The fundamental idea here is, good play is rewarded with access to higher spell
No more chugging down mana potions, farming magic resources and then just clicking the awesome button
If you want to cast that fireball, you actually put in the work
It also like Stamina gives the players another element they manipulate in enemies


15 Skills
Also 10 levels each, where each new level is an actual game changer and not small incremental additions
Player gets 1 skill point to freely use after each level-up
Max level is 40
Player starts the game with only 5 skill points which depend on his chosen class

BLADES - this skill expands the character's moveset with all manner of swords
HEAVY METALS - ditto for axes and hammers
POLEARMS - ditto for spears and quarterstaffs
HAND-TO-HAND - ditto for hand-to-hand and daggers
MARKSMAN - increases accuracy (no shoting arrows from sneaking stance, except for crossbows but those make alot of noise)
SNEAK - each levels reduces noise made in several (not all) ground surfaces
SECURITY - both lockpicking and pickpocketing
SPEECHCRAFT - improved existing dialog choices ; Persuasion ability ; Barter ability ; Reading ability
ATHLETICS - running speed, jumping height+width, swimming, rope climbing, various acrobatics (such as vault jumping, wall running, wall jumping, funambulism)
SURVIVALISM - riding, sailing, hunting, cooking, climbing, first aid, recognizing fauna+flora
ALCHEMY - similar to Witcher 1, no ridiculously busted morrowind shit ; each potion has a required skill level
DESTRUCTION - ofensive magic
RESTORATION - defensive magic
CONJURATION - space/time magic (summoning shit)
THAUMATHURGY - mysticism + alteration, for enviromental manipulation

There's various trainers for each Skill around the world, but only 1 is actually available to train you and only provide just 1 level-up for that skill
Each new playtrough randomizes that trainer

No enchanting, magic items are each special
Along with their traditional powers, each Race has unique Stat properties and Skill abilities
For example:
- Redguards can dual wield weapons and can perform partial Stamina recovery (à lá Nioh's Ki Pulse)
- Argonians are immune to disease and poison and have natural cameleon, thermal vision and special swimming method (like Majora's Mask Zora mask)
Etc.

No respec horsehit
You want to play something new?
Start a new game

XP is gained by:
- completing Quests (each with its own fixed value)
- discovering locations (value comes in tiers of how hidden the place is)
- and how much damge the PC took in a combat encounter
That's right, no XP from killing but rather from getting your teeth kicked in
Why?
Because not only it makes more sense (your PC is learning from mistakes), it also makes farming for XP a pain the ass process
Why though?
Because fuck powergamers - this is a videogame, not a spreadcheet that needs to be autistically corrected
Take that cancer back to whatever MMO rathole you crawled out from


Iron Man: Armored Avenger
Set when Tony still isn't Iron Man for long, maybe not even an Avenger yet (though ocasionally meeting a few members like Hank Pym)
George Perez style art design
Classic characters and story - Tony is victim of a conspiracy, loses all but 1 suit and the bulk of his fortune, globe-trotting action thriller ensues!

Gameplay highly dependant on suit used
A multitude of customization options - from armor skeleton, plating thickness, number of arc reactors, number of speed boosters, weapons equipped, defensive tech, roller stakes :lol:, etc.
In-game the player can switch between "gameplay styles" in the form of energy transfer - i.e. choosing between siphoning more power from the arc reactor to Offensive capabilities, or Defensive Capabilities, or for greater Speed (more power to boosters)
Both air and ground combat (including melee)

Mission based, with scoring and money system
Possibility to repeat missions in VR - along with VR level creator and multiplayer
Each level is its own unique experience:
- busting out of his captors cave with the Mark 1
- dogfight over the Atlantic against an AIM flying super carrier
- infiltrating an underwater Hydra base with Namor as constant torn
- battling the Crimson Dynamo over the peaks and valeys of the Alps
- finding and capturing the Hulk on the Grand Canyon
- surviving an assault by Living Laser, Ghost and Blizzard on Stark Tower with one of the more simple suits
- big mech fight against Ultimo (possibly requiring a new style of gameplay, towards more conventional mech games)
- dungeon crawl through Doomstadt
- liberating a small island nation (with the caveat you can't harm civilians)
- showdown agaisnt the Mandarian in a dimension of his own creation.


An amalgamation of Far Cry 2, MGS3, MGS5 and Deus Ex
Play as mercenary in a fictional war-torn African country (doesn't need to be our world, can be a similiar world)
World composed by a HUB level, located in the country's somewhat stable capital, where you chill out between missions, take care of your equipment and procure jobs from various factions - most missions are set outside the city in isolated big sandbox levels throughout the country
3 main factions - each offering between 10 and 20 missions
Multiple smaller factions that present smaller missions - also these factions availability and missions are dependant on the player's choices in the main campgain
Atmosphere and eviroments similar to Far Cry 2

Enviromental interaction on the level of MGS3 and Deus Ex
Enemy AI as good as MGS3 and MGS5
Controls like MGS5
Limb based damage like Deus Ex, with a healing system similar to MGS3
Level design on the quality of Deus Ex - in the sense of, allowing for multiples approaches though obviously not all equally efficient, easy and requiring the same set of abilities

Like in Far Cry 2, different pre-made characters
However their differences are actually significant as they each have different stats and skills (it's not an rpg because at no point in the game can you upgrade your PC)
There's no screen detailing the minutae of stats and skills, instead you get succint description of what each character is good and bad at
And these must be bring noticable gameplay differences, for example:
- without the marksman skills, the other characters can't move while aiming and/or have that Deus Ex/REmake 2 disadvantage of needing to wait for the crosshairs to close-up before taking a shot
- without the sneak skill, characters can't creep
Etc.


F-Zero GX sequel
Online multiplayer
Track creation and sharing
PC release
Is this really that difficult to understand Nintendo?
Doesn't even need to be a sequel, you can just remaster GX with these added features
You can even use that as an execuse to justify a 50€ price tag and it would still print money
 
Last edited:
Joined
Nov 23, 2017
Messages
4,120
It sold decently on the clout of the LOTR trilogy, but as a standalone game was seen as pretty poor. It suffers from the same issue as virtually all LOTR's stories not involving the Fellowship: there is nothing more interesting than the exploits of the Fellowship.

They could’ve done more games like that, without the LotR’s license, and probably sold just as good if not better. Movie license could easily be an albatross around the neck of any game, as movie license games are so often seen as something that should be avoided.

I haven’t seen anything that said The Third Age was seen as doing poorly.

It’s just weird. The Third Age did well. The Third Age was a style of RPG that EA had success with through their publishing deal with SquareSoft. That style of game was still successful throughout the 360 era. But EA never did something like it again.

Then again, EA is a company that makes little sense. Like the Def Jam series. Def Jam: Fight for NY is a hit for them. A new producer comes on for the sequel. He goes “wrestling and hip hop don’t mix” even though Fight for New York was a popular success, and had moved away from being a wrestling game. The new producer lets developer AKI go, changes how the series plays, and kills the franchise. But what does EA do? Do they bring AKI (who by Icon had already changed their name to syn Sophia) to do something like Fight for New York again with or without Def Jam? No. They just let that once popular series die, and don’t even kind of try returning to the previous successful formula. EA even had the license to do Marvel fighting game around that time, they could’ve had AKI make that Marvel Nemesis game instead of a studio that had never don’t anything like that before.
 
Joined
Nov 23, 2017
Messages
4,120
Back when Fallout and Fallout 2 were new, and I was playing them all the time over and over again, I thought it’d be cool if you actually had to eat and sleep in the game. The games were just so immersive, that they had me thinking about little what if gameplay system. Like what if you had to eat? What if food just worked like food, and the medical stuff was the only way to heal? You could use that to drive all types of options. You need to eat to live. Do you try to hunt for food. Do you take a job that maybe you wouldn’t otherwise do so you can buy food? To you chance trying to steal food and possibly find yourself in a combat encounter or on the wrong side of the law in the area?

Same kind of thing with sleep. Sleeping is part of the game. But it’s only really used to heal or pass time. But what if you needed to sleep. What if not sleeping fucked with your aim? Rainbow Six had come out between Fallout and Fallout 2, and I thought being able to crouch and go prone to change aim accuracy would be cool additions. And if you could go prone to give yourself better aim, I thought something that could be done is if you’d gone a long time without sleep there was maybe a chance you’d fall asleep while prone. Needing to sleep would also present the same kind of options as needing to sleep. Do you sleep out in the wilderness where you could be randomly attack? Do you sleep on the streets of some town can chance someone robbing you or getting a reputation as some kind of bum in the town? Do you pay to say in some flop house where maybe the whole party doesn’t get to fully rest, or do you play for some nicer places which means you’ll need to be more on top of doing jobs or you may need to take work with people you’d otherwise rather avoid.

There was the marriage thing too from Fallout 2. In Fallout 2 there’s a little event that can find you in a shotgun wedding. In most cases it’s a negative. As your significant other is fairly useless, will take up a party member slot, and won’t leave your party one they’re there. But you can game the system and use this character to go over the games normal default part limit. Your character in the game also has an age, which as far as I know is pointless, but it will change as time goes by if you allow that much time to go by. As far as I know the age thing is just there for immersion. But these two things did get me thinking. What if you had to get married and have a kid. What if whatever goal you were trying to accomplish was some grand you couldn’t do it in your original character’s lifetime, and getting married and having kids became a type of new character select. Like at a certain point in the game you start thinking about building up your kids skills so when you start playing as them they’re in a better place than you were at the start, and maybe even a better place than you when you leave off.

Gameplay wise, combat wise, there was a few different things I though could be fun.

The first was just regular ol’ Fallout combat...but with those Rainbow Six things I mentioned before, and you had full control over your party. So essential what Fallout Tactics would do a few years later. Commandos also had me wishing you could do all the stealth stuff you could do in that game in Fallout, (and in Arcanum a few years later) like you could do all the kind of stuff you can in Commandos in real-time, but once combat started it went into turn based tactical combat. So that’s one version of combat.

The other combat system was, at the time of was very enamored with Outwars, which had these huge 3D environments, and was the first game I can remember playing that had modern third person shooter controls. So Outwars had me thinking, what if you did a Fallout as a third person shooter? You take how the aiming reticle works in Rainbow Six, and you have that effected by your stats. So how wide it stays, how tight it was while moving, how fast it snapped back to normal when coming out of a run would all be based on character stats. I wasn’t really thinking about it being a open world sandbox game though. It’s still ‘98 after all. Outwars had big levels, but they weren’t that big. So I was still thinking normal Fallout 1 and 2 towns and random encounter locations. It’s just these random encounter locations could be as large as big OutWars area with enemies all around the place.

The third was another action version based on my love of AKI wrestling games, and because one of the builds I enjoyed playing in Fallout was basically Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star; a character that could blow someone apart with a punch like a point blank shotgun blast, and could dodge point blank gunfire...even sometimes if that gunfire was coming from a minigun. So I just kind of thought it’d be cool if melee was somewhat like a very violent AKI wrestling game, and you could do team up attacks with party members. The thing with this though is range weapons would be purely lock-on, and function under the same stat system as the regular turn based tactical game. Whether or not your melee attack hit wouldn’t be governed by stats, it’d work just like a normal action game; but stats would effect damage, and could effect things like if you (or an enemy) could punch through a block, and what manner of things you could dodge. Like low level dodge can dodge punches, high level dodge could have you looking like Neo in the Matrix.

When I realized the food thing probably came from playing The Oregon Trail for a few years. Really the only game I can think of up to ‘97 and ‘98 where eating was a thing you’d have to do just so your characters wouldn’t starve, at least that I played, were The Oregon Trail games. I thought fast travel could probably just go all in on that. There’s also a very minor level of this in Fallout during fast travel where you might get radiation sickness from certain places, and you’d get messages like how the lump on your foot has grown into an extra toe.

A couple years later Skies of Arcadia came out, I was really into that game, and I thought something like the Discoveries would be a good addition as a type of special encounter location. Especially if they were full locations that could be explored. Although not every “Discovery” would be a built that could be explored.
 

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