What game would you make?

[loves2splooge]

I think up plenty ideas for video games. If I had the motivation and programming knowledge to be a game designer, I would like to create a turn-based jrpg-like as I feel that there are shortcomings with the genre today that need to be reworked. I`d want a heavy focus on non-linear exploration (make the entire world accessible from the start. No preventing the player from straying with a "you musn't go there" message), fewer but challenging encounters that count (like SRPGs), and a great deal of skill customization depth. The big focus would be on the combat. Combat seems to be the weakest link for many traditional jrpgs (boring encounter after boring encounter in a long ass dungeon). Encounters need to be interesting.

Overrated, uninspired cliche narrative is the second weakest link. I don`t feel narrative, cutscenes, cinematics or any of that is all that important for a video game to be fun (unless it`s integral to the video game, like a visual novel or interactive fiction game) so for the scenario, I would devote very little time to these things (much like 8-bit jrpgs and neo-retro jrpgs like Etrian Odyssey). Many jrpgs use narrative and cutscenes as a crutch for poor gameplay and while that worked 10 years ago when jrpgs were a pretty novel thing for me (`zomg it`s liek a movie but it`s really a videogaem. lulz`), that doesn`t fly anymore. Why would you trudge through poor gameplay for good narrative when you can just watch a movie or anime for the good narrative without even having to trudge through poor gameplay? And like I said, jrpg narratives just aren`t that good anymore anyway. They`re getting tired and stale.

Plenty jrpg fans would disagree with me but that audience already has narrative-heavy jrpgs and stick to the jrpg status quo. I`d want something that goes against the common modern jrpg template. For the jaded gamer who is sick of all these games (and this is a problem for not just jrpgs but many other games out there) trying to be movies and just wants a fun romp. It seems like everyone who wants to improve jrpgs wants to turn them into wrpgs. But I don`t feel that is necessary to evolve the genre.