One thing I really want to see is RPGs where the world acts and moves as a genuine setting rather than just being a sandbox that pauses once Captain Protagonist leaves the immediate area. Things like:
Time limits which actually matter! No more of this "oh, I know Alduin is going to destroy the world imminently but I'm off to spend the next month doing odd jobs for the Thieves' Guild!" And, frankly, also have something cool that you can only get if you devote yourself to the Thieves' Guild too.
Factions who actually impact the world if you help/hurt them, beyond flags and guard uniforms changing. Take the Legion from New Vegas. If you help them, they should take over places like Novac mid-game, and then actually enslave and/or execute people who opposed them (like Boone and the other sniper). Alternatively, if you oppose the Legion, then have something where you raid a slave camp and NPCs you get out actually have story and quests you can access if you safely get them home.
Going back to point 1, have factions and groups actually pursue their own agendas and missions outside of player input. Sticking with New Vegas, have the NCR and Legion actually throwing armies at each other (ideally with some level of randomness to it so NCR might win one game, Legion another, etc) instead of Forlorn Hope and Nelson will just keep staring at each other forever unless you get involved.
Groups that have standards. No Todd, a dumb brute barbarian should not be able to join the Mage's Guild. If you are head of the mage's guild, then the fighter's guild should at least reject you from becoming their leader, if not bar you outright. And solving two problems should not lead to the supposedly prestigious ancient chivalric order of knights suddenly declaring me their commander and the best leader they've ever had.
Don't always have a "best" ending to conflicts. I say this as someone who loves playing high Charisma/talky characters, but why can you almost always speech check things into an ideal outcome. It's a bit better when you actually have to do work beyond just the speech check, like with the Geth and Quarian in ME3, but as cool as that is in the moment it seems like speech checks are borderline mind control and almost always give the optimal outcome in most games. But I shouldn't be able to erase centuries of conflict with one rousing speech.
I think a lot of this comes down to two main things:
Achievement culture means that lots of players insist on "completing" games, and often quickly, so the average gamer will not want to go through a 100+ hour RPG multiple times to see everything
and
Devs worried about players "missing" content. I don't know really if this is a publisher-induced concern (fear of money being spent on content only a small amount of players would see), a writer-induced concern (see Emil Pagliarulo's ridiculous paper airplane argument about game story and dialogue), reacting to achievement culture, or something else, but devs seem to want players to be able to see most stuff in one playthrough too.
One thing I really want to see is RPGs where the world acts and moves as a genuine setting rather than just being a sandbox that pauses once Captain Protagonist leaves the immediate area. Things like:
Time limits which actually matter! No more of this "oh, I know Alduin is going to destroy the world imminently but I'm off to spend the next month doing odd jobs for the Thieves' Guild!" And, frankly, also have something cool that you can only get if you devote yourself to the Thieves' Guild too.
Factions who actually impact the world if you help/hurt them, beyond flags and guard uniforms changing. Take the Legion from New Vegas. If you help them, they should take over places like Novac mid-game, and then actually enslave and/or execute people who opposed them (like Boone and the other sniper). Alternatively, if you oppose the Legion, then have something where you raid a slave camp and NPCs you get out actually have story and quests you can access if you safely get them home.
Going back to point 1, have factions and groups actually pursue their own agendas and missions outside of player input. Sticking with New Vegas, have the NCR and Legion actually throwing armies at each other (ideally with some level of randomness to it so NCR might win one game, Legion another, etc) instead of Forlorn Hope and Nelson will just keep staring at each other forever unless you get involved.
Groups that have standards. No Todd, a dumb brute barbarian should not be able to join the Mage's Guild. If you are head of the mage's guild, then the fighter's guild should at least reject you from becoming their leader, if not bar you outright. And solving two problems should not lead to the supposedly prestigious ancient chivalric order of knights suddenly declaring me their commander and the best leader they've ever had.
Don't always have a "best" ending to conflicts. I say this as someone who loves playing high Charisma/talky characters, but why can you almost always speech check things into an ideal outcome. It's a bit better when you actually have to do work beyond just the speech check, like with the Geth and Quarian in ME3, but as cool as that is in the moment it seems like speech checks are borderline mind control and almost always give the optimal outcome in most games. But I shouldn't be able to erase centuries of conflict with one rousing speech.
I think a lot of this comes down to two main things:
and