There's an idea I've been musing over since watching a video on speculation about what Persona 6 could be like, especially with considering what if the central color of the game was green this time and thinking of themes associated with that color - namely nature/nurture, greenery - and to me it's almost like a natural evolution of the general gameplay narrative of Persona to the point where I'd be delighted to see the series going in this general direction.

See current Persona generally have social links (or confidants) working the same way every time; you have a wide selection of people, and whenever you feel like it and your schedule allows it, you can opt to seek them out and level up your relationship with them. And while there are days and periods where they are not available, when it comes to the link itself, you are essentially "the center of the universe". Since after P3 they don't even get mad anymore when you leave them hanging for months, and your relationship can just continue right where you left off. It almost feels comical when you get your "you've forged a bond that can never be broken!" after you've met them for the first time in weeks while you basically ignored them the whole time to hang out with other people you barely know.

I'd love to see a Persona game delving into how... ludicrous this really is at the base, and theme it around the message of relationships like the social links of earlier games being empty and overall non-functional ways of handling closer relationships, with new social links requiring active and more constant time investment into keeping up, and your social links not just being like 'live and let live' but also having an investment in doing things together with you, and if you refuse to nurture the relationship... it dies down and you return to / settle into just being acquaintances. And you could make some pretty powerful statements and even have the antagonist or something be someone who treats their own 'social links' the way the previous protagonists do and use that to point out the flaws in it.

I feel like it'd be a great way to kinda look back at the series in a meta way and take what I consider to be the logical next step. Not too sure how to make it so it plays as well as Persona 5's streamlined confidant system does, and yes, if handled poorly this could easily make the game overall a chore to play, but I trust Atlus enough to be able to make something good with it ^^