Balls.

I wasted hours and hours playing Marble Madness and pinball games and this obscure Maxis puzzle game where you manipulate a series of tubes to get colored balls in their associated pockets, Super Monkey Ball, etc etc.

Give me more balls!
(if you're chuckling, grow up.)

mmorp without stupid grinding and turn based fights

BLOONINJA 503:
mmorp without stupid grinding and turn based fights

But how would they keep you playing?

Wars? What about wars from mythology?

Mythology?

None spring to mind, other than the Heavenly Rebellion.

Here's a mythological wargame for yall:

"you are Siddhārtha, on your way to enlightenment. You're already sitting under the Bodhi Tree, and you're reaching higher states. But then angry god whats-his-name-again sends his armies of arrows, daughters, elephants and whatnot towards you!

Goal of the game is to, just as in the legends, turn those armies into harmless stuff, like arrows into flower petals.

This game could span no more days than Buddha sat under that tree."

Honestly a game like GTA or something where you have real choice in how to achieve things. The original GTAs just had a financial target as your goal, bring that back and give us more ways to reach it... life of crime - but with better police plskthx, finding a 9-5 and progressing through the company Sims style - naturally you'd have fade in / fade out whenever you entered the office - or niche jobs... GTA3 onwards have the taxi driver stuff, there was all the pizza delivery jobs.

Strap that to some kind of storyline that you could honestly get to make sense with so many ways to reach your goal and, well, think you might have my perfect game right there.

Edit : To clarify, the under used theme here isn't open-ended sandbox stuff, that's everywhere now, it's the real choice in how you want to play. Right now most 'sandbox' games still involve you having to satisfy very specific criteria to advance through the game. I couldn't unlock the whole map in GTA:SA by being a taxi driver, for example.

LSD Trips. Just base an entire game on one.

It would sell BILLIONS!

I'd like to see a game where the result of a particular battle would determine the course of the game. For example: Faction A and B are fighting in Battle Y. If Faction A kill 500 soldiers, they might enslave a village of Faction B and then Faction B would have to fight back to take it. At the same time, if B won the aforementioned battle, they might choose to make a peace treaty or somesuch.

I have a great idea for a book... if that counts?

Bulletinmybrain:

BLOONINJA 503:
mmorp without stupid grinding and turn based fights

But how would they keep you playing?

Planetside did quite well and was epic levels of fun until the devs started injesting raw ether and fucked the game up.

What I don't get is why game companies always stick to the cliches when the total opposite of the norm has so much potential. There are stacks and stacks of games that go with the 'so you have amnesia...' plot, but what about a game that's the total opposite. Instead of amnesia, what about a game character that knows everything, in a Dr. Manhattan sort of way? Instead of a strategy game based around war, what about one based around peace?
It's really not hard to start coming up with novel ideas if you just take the same ole shit and spin it on its head.

H.R.Shovenstuff:
I have a great idea for a book... if that counts?

Why not? If you want to put out an idea, go for it.

Hey Joe:
LSD Trips. Just base an entire game on one.

It would sell BILLIONS!

Jeff Minter did that.

It was called Space Giraffe. Didn't sell that well.

You're in a large city. It's 1109AD. You live in a fantasy world not unlike Warhammer The age Of Reckoning. The entire game takes place during the siege of the largest non evil city. A bit like GTA a bit like fable. You have to either destroy the city or protect it.

After that make it an rpg type game and the city has to be large enough to make it seem realistic, much larger than Assassins creed, about the size as GTA4 but more medieval/with the old European feel of fable.

Can't think of any more right now.

I'd always wanted to see a free-roaming game in the vein of the Hellboy Mythos (Oh please God no the games) and Nocturne (not the PS2 game), a modern-day city, teeming with occult life, both friendly and aggressive.

Actually, that sounds like GTA.

It's impossible to call something 'Free Roaming' without immediately drawing paralells to GTA. Blargh...

Surggical_Scar:
Oh, and don't clutter your posts with ten paragraph ext blocks. Keep it short and punchy - how you'd pitch it to a developer, no more than two sentences.

A life simulating RPG that allows you to post and interact with an email and messaging system in which you try desperately not to tell people how to post on an open forum.

I would quite like a game set in a modern day city, the protagonist is a normal man, with psychopathic tendencies and how his life goes to hell as his reality blends with his imagination, he loses his grasp on the real world and through a series of disturbing incidents we can watch his slow and painful descent into a black state of depression and insanity and the game climaxes with his unnoticed and melodramatic suicide involving his warped perception the way he sees the world around him, and his schizophrenic personalities that have been driving closer to the edge day by day causing him to act irrationally. Perhaps it wouldn't lighten your mood, but good god would it make you think.

They would never make it,nobody but me would buy it, but I think it would be worth it for the opportunity to play such a game.

Edit : Wow, I think I may have lost the ability to feel. I have just read my post on paper (so to speak) and it didn't seem so bad in my head.

how about an MMO that doesn't tell you your in an MMO, like when you start the game it just pops up a message asking if it can access the internet for updates and whatever. I mean it's probably impossible for people to not figure it out.

FrankDux:
Wars that are not WW2 are underused in my opinion. War games are awesome, especially those of the FPS kind, but I feel like most of them are WW2 shooters. What about a really good Vietnam game?

A game based on 'nam already existes and it was one of the most bloody and mind fucking games ever.
The reason we are stuck with constant WW2 games is because it is n the "sweet spot" where in it is far enough in the past that people are not offended by the game being made, but is close enough to today to have weapons that can easly be put in a game. Almost all other wars either are two fresh a wound or used tech that would be way to hard to put in a game to make it worth while (although granted The Darkness had a good WW1 section in it)

AgentCLXXXIII:
It's called The Neverhood and Panzer Dragoon.

how does the neverhood fit in to the hellboy methos? maybe i missed something in both of them.

Random generation.

Random generation of anything, really. Preferably maps. If game had a nearly endless amount of different maps or settings to play in, people could play it for years if they had attention spans that long. Maybe someone could make a system that can generate a full story-line from a randomly generated map, eh? It would be like hundreds of games with different stories, ranging from two- or three-person stories all the way up to huge-ass wars. Or you could just do different stories in the same world, until you got bored of the setting.

It would probably be damn hard to pull off, though...

OR; maybe a game based on a fictional war. There's a whole bunch of battles, always at least three going on at any given time, and the player progresses through the war, selecting which battles to take part in. So they could choose to fight in the battle for a nuclear facility, invade a city, or something else, and there would be, say, ten battles for the entire war. At the end, based on which battles were won and lost, different things happen. For example, if by the end the enemy still had an active nuclear facility, they nuked you. Or if you had one, you nuked them. So, because you can only play ten battles out of thirty in a single game, you can go on a huge amount of different paths through the game, and each battle you played in would affect future battles. It would be awesome if done right.

Raven28256:

A GTA-style series where you play as an ex-soldier-turned-vigilante. Each game takes place in a different country and follows different characters. Examples: An operator from Marine Force Recon somewhere in America, an ex-Spetsnaz operator in Moscow, a former member of the now-disbanded 32 Battalion in Johannesburg (That is South Africa, for those who aren't sure), you get the idea. Another concept: No dubbing for certain countries; the characters speak their real language. So the Russian character will speak Russian in each version, just with different subtitles in different languages for the appropriate region.

I really like that idea. It would be a good way to combine GTA style openworldedness with first person shooting actionness. You should definetly get to work on that.

The problem with most "modern wars is that they tend to involve a lot of massacres of innocent civilians by soldiers + rape and torture - since genrally both sides do this (the more powerful force to a greater extent), it would be hard to make a game that was 'appealling' to the mass market, because games about vietnam would feel like playing the characters in stuff like Platoon etc. As has already been said, to make something different is to take a risk, and "good / bad" is never so clear in most wars as it was, to some extent in WW2 and many previous wars.

I think that someone should incorporate music into combat (music flowing with/helping in combat, or maybe actual music weapons!)
imagine the possibilities!
OOH! and a online shooter with HUGE battles and the story/world constantly changes as time goes on!

A shooter that is set in some random 19th-century war. That is, steam navies for the more advanced countries, frontloader muskets and sword-wielding cavalry rushes. Maybe an online persistent world kinda thing, who knows.

A wild-west game where you play the actual mayor of a frontier town, I mean like an thirdperson shooter RPG kinda thing where you have to manage your town's welfare by interacting with different books and stuff in your office and recruit a sheriff to help protect the town against bandits, hire traveling bounty hunters to confront robbers who robbed your bank, and maybe go on a diplomatic mission by taking the train to a different town. Who knows, the train could get robbed and you'd see outlaws on horses running alongside the train. You'd be taken hostage and you'd have the choice of trying to start an uprising against the bandits by whispering to other passengers or just sit still and hope it ends quickly, assuming the outlaws don't take you hostage.

Such a game would make my day.

awesome idea!
A guy on acid (life sim)
acid trips (platformers, shooters, puzzle, etc)

Calmaveth:
The problem with most "modern wars is that they tend to involve a lot of massacres of innocent civilians by soldiers + rape and torture - since genrally both sides do this (the more powerful force to a greater extent), it would be hard to make a game that was 'appealling' to the mass market, because games about vietnam would feel like playing the characters in stuff like Platoon etc. As has already been said, to make something different is to take a risk, and "good / bad" is never so clear in most wars as it was, to some extent in WW2 and many previous wars.

Ummm...Massacres and violence against civilians have been in EVERY war, including WWII. It isn't something limited to Cold War and beyond conflicts like you make it out to be. Vietnam had no more of this than any other conflict, it is just that Vietnam was the first war where millions of Americans could see the conflict as it unfolded. That sort of stuff was covered a bit more. It isn't because it was more common than in past wars, merely that they focused on it more because it made for juicy TV, thus proving that the media rather focus on the worst to get more viewers.

WWII had a lot of this too, on both sides. Ever heard of the Japanese war crimes? They slaughtered millions of civilians, kept young girls as forced sex slaves, caused famines because they took all the food from a region, and more. Even the Allies did a lot of bad things. The Russians were notorious for war crimes like looting and the rape and murder of civilians, and then you have campaigns like the firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden.

So don't say modern wars have any more of this than WWII, because this sort of stuff isn't anything new. If developers shouldn't make games about modern wars because of war crimes, then they certainly shouldn't make games about WWII for the same reason. That excuse is pretty weak at best. The real reason is because WWII games sell, and developers keep making them because, no matter how much we bitch and moan about there being too many WWII games, the masses still devourer them.

Setting: Ancient Egypt
Episodic - Episodes: Slavery, Denial :) and ROME

At first, you learn controls in your small town. At the end, your last training is learning to, lets say, climb. When you climb a ladder, you see an invading party. You fight, but lose, and are captured. Fight through dungeons, learn fantastic Egyptian weaponry, get out.

Are found out to be descended from Ra. No fucken way, you say, as you leave on the quickest raft and head to the coast. You gain ONE POWER so as not to overload, you beserk under certain conditions, revealing the Wrath of Ra

blah blah blah til you get out, cross ocean, fight in rome, and ascend in the middle of the coliseum.

A medieval game ala CoD/Battlefront. Pick a class like Cavalry, Halberdier, Archer, Heavy Infantry, etc. and weapons/armour and fight battles, either historic, fictional, or randomly generated. Every position would be occupied by a player, from the General who gives out the orders to the footmen on the front lines. Better armour/weapons can be earned by completing achievements based on things like kills, capturing resources, winning battles, etc.You would also get ranks in each class based on your performance in battle. Battles would vary from sieges, sneak attacks, holding specific resources, or epic battles of hundreds of thousands. Maybe have some fantastic elements as well, but probably not.

I'm thinking something along the lines of a MMORTS/FPS.

LewsTherin:
A medieval game ala CoD/Battlefront. Pick a class like Cavalry, Halberdier, Archer, Heavy Infantry, etc. and weapons/armour and fight battles, either historic, fictional, or randomly generated. Every position would be occupied by a player, from the General who gives out the orders to the footmen on the front lines. Better armour/weapons can be earned by completing achievements based on things like kills, capturing resources, winning battles, etc.You would also get ranks in each class based on your performance in battle. Battles would vary from sieges, sneak attacks, holding specific resources, or epic battles of hundreds of thousands. Maybe have some fantastic elements as well, but probably not.

I'm thinking something along the lines of a MMORTS/FPS.

They have a LotR game like that coming out.

FrankDux:
Wars that are not WW2 are underused in my opinion. War games are awesome, especially those of the FPS kind, but I feel like most of them are WW2 shooters. What about a really good Vietnam game?

Like the war where Israel had to fight off about 9 other countries(the 6 Day War I believe), and fight off the arabs on different battlefront. You could have some flight missions, fps missions, and other types of gameplay. That would be cool! :)

Hey Joe:
LSD Trips. Just base an entire game on one.

It would sell BILLIONS!

I thought that was killer 7...weird.

Eldritch Warlord:

LewsTherin:
A medieval game ala CoD/Batt