My perfect game would be an MMORPG done in the styling of a single player RPG. For those who know of my Aiyon world, it would be based on this world, but that's not hugely important if you don't know of Aiyon.
Long. No, really!It would start off with a hundred or more safe visitable locations, varying in size (similar to FFVII going from small huts to, well, Midgar-esque multi-layered sprawling cities). It would not be easy to get to the far areas from your starting location... you would need to work long and hard to get to them, unlocking vehicles etc. in order to pass certain areas and so forth (similar to FFVII, again). In some cases this could take weeks of leveling just to get to them - imagine being able to unlock a new area or two on average each day if you played for four or five hours per day.
To get from visitable location to visitable location, you would travel on the overworld or using transport such as trains, vehicles etc. which would also be visible on the overworld but not always controllable. Perhaps it might just be a quick cutscene similar to going from Costa Del Sol to Gold Saucer in such non-controllable instances, or perhaps it would be like the trains in FFVIII where you watch the train move around.
The overworld would be massive and feature limited gameplay functionality such as item finding, fighting, player to player trading, stuff like that. You could zoom in or out of the overworld. At the furthest out, it would look similar to the world maps seen in FFVII/VIII/IX. At this point you would move faster but not be able to avoid any aggressive enemies even if they are slow because you effectively run into them and not be able to see items (although there's still a chance you could pick them up). Only party members would be visible on the zoomed out overworld. If you zoomed into the world map, you would find it easier to avoid enemies, you would move between cities at a slower pace (effecitvely you are showing your journey "in detail" when you zoom in) and be able to hunt non-aggressive animals and visibly see items you can obtain. The overworld would be important for leveling up, collecting items, stuff like that. When zoomed in, you could see more players than just your party and a journey from city to city could take between a couple of minutes to an hour depending on how remote the area is. When zoomed out, a journey would normally take less than a minute, not including battle time. Think of it like switching from traveling in a car to traveling on a bike or something. The time difference naturally changes.
Dungeons would be fewer than safe visitable locations (due to the overworld being a giant dungeon), and could range from specific small areas of the overworld through to extensive areas such as large forests. On the overworld, many enemies will be avoidable while others which out-pace your method of transportation would not be avoidable (although they would need to be aggressive to force you into battle). Some avoidable ones might also link up to story progression so it would not always be wise to avoid every enemy there is.
Instead of adding new areas in expansions, the developers would instead focus on developing the existing world. This is why I would have so many areas from the start. Sure, sometimes a development could lead to a new visitable area if circumstances called for it (a new crater should a comet hit, for example) but the vast number of existing locations would instead be the focus. An expansion would show the changes that have happened to that location based on events of the story, similar to the differences between Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 and Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. If players congested in a small town quite a lot, that town might grow slightly, for example.
People could create quests and post them onto in-game bulletin boards. These quests could even be chained into player-driven storylines that have multiple requirements done stage-by-stage. As time goes on, the devs would taken on player feedback and implement more kinds of ways that quests could be expanded on. It would work a little like LittleBigPlanet. Players could also create and partake in sports/gambling/games with leaderboards, including anything from races to hunting challenges (not simply "kill _____" but rather "kill ____ from x distance".
Magic would be something everyone had the ability to use but you could only truly grow strong in one area at a time. As you strengthen in one of the eleven areas - eg. Fire - all other areas would weaken slightly. This wouldn't be noticeable at lower levels, just the higher ones. You can still change your equipment very easily and thus have significantly different roles in battle, and you should still be able to be proficient in all areas of magic despite you being extremely strong in one. While equipment would still allow you to be capable in almost all battles, the magic choices you make will be what people look for in battle rather than the normal "need a tank". You might still need a tank, but it also might be an advantage if they are competent in a certain magic. The main magic you have could be taken to extremes when maxed out, allowing you to have extreme advantages in certain situations. These extremes would also allow for a multitude of tactics to be used against a variety of enemies, some of which would be due to magical weakness while others would be due to creative methods of victory.
The magic-focused world would also react to the magic use. As one type of magic becomes prominent, the number of monsters that are effective against that kind of magic would naturally grow more common. This would effectively mean the world balances itself and constantly allows for people to change their actions in the game. The flipside is that when those enemies you are effective against die out, they also become rare and their drops would become more valuable.
Certain areas of the world would be the 'focus' for each magic type. Visiting these magic types could allow you to change your magical focus when you are a high/capped level by means of undertaking a quest.
The storyline would naturally be huge and would be released in patches of at least a few major and a dozen minor quests each month or so to avoid people crashing through the story all at once and then getting bored and leaving. Annual expansions would come with more long-term quests that would take months to complete.
There would be a lot of lore. Beating various different kinds of enemies would increase the lore available to you, just like in FFXII. This lore could lead to you being more likely to get certain drops from certain enemies by identifying the best ways to kill them to ensure that drop arrives.
The main reason to keep playing would be the developing world and the community rather than the quests themselves - although the story would still be worth it, and the graphics would be decent at worst (overworld zoomed out would not be amazing) and amazing at best (we're talking Myst-esque visuals in HD at some of the safe visitable locations that aren't cities/shops - cities/shops would still be HD but probably not as mindblowing, although naturally all that would be subjective). The world would probably be at an industrial age or a bit later, but with a much heavier focus on magic as a source of power and technology, and magic would generally come from the people.
There would be seasons that would be notable in some areas and less notable in others. This would not work on Earth's reasoning for seasons but instead be based on magic, so sometimes it might not be summer at one end of the world just because it's winter at another. Seasons would make certain weather more likely and also in some locations affect the terrain/flora.
Everyone would be on the same global world, and it would truly be global from the get-go. None of this "we will unlock future regions later on" business. Instead of multiple worlds seperating people, starting regions would seperate them instead, and there would be seperate servers for each region (regions generally being between one or two servers per continent). Starting regions would also have starting cities seperated out within them, just like servers have seperate starting cities. This would mean that instead of being seperated from your friends permanently, you would only ever be seperated from them for as long as it takes you to geographically reach them. You could still contact them in-game before then, though, through chat (ie, communication device in-game). People would, just as they do with servers in current MMOs, undoubtedly still endeavour to organise themselves to be in the same region from the start. Not all regions would have starting points, either. Some would be "foreign" to new players and require you to unlock access to them through gameplay (eg. Wutai in FFVII).
Pretty sure nobody will read all that or care, but I thought it would be interesting to write down my thoughts on the perfect game for me, and it just kind of kept growing. I'm actually restraining myself from putting down more stuff. xD I really, really need to get working on Aiyon again.
