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[Reelya]

The original Thief: The Dark Project had some sections like that too, e.g. when you're infiltrating the Hammer monastery, you're originally disguised as a new acolyte, so you have to be careful not to trigger suspicion by e.g. trying to open any doors you're not supposed to. I'm not sure exactly how detailed it got, there was a crouch key, but I don't remember whether crawling around raised suspicion.

[Egan_BW]

That's a thing in DF, actually. If your adventurer is in the sneaking stance people will be more suspicious. Or that's how it was supposed to work back in .40, I have no idea if it still works or ever did work like that because DF is a bit wonkey.

[Ultimuh]

Is there a 4x or Grand Strategy game which has a very diverging (not sure what else to call it) tech tree?
And by that, I mean that once you choose a path with your faction, you are barred from any other paths. And that AI factons have randomly selected their own paths as well.

Stellaris kind of does this with three ascension perk lines, but unfortunately not with the actual tech tree.

Kind of bothers me that too many (in my opinion) strategic games often has kind of linear technology.. lines.

[cerapa]

And by that, I mean that once you choose a path with your faction, you are barred from any other paths. And that AI factons have randomly selected their own paths as well.

At that point you're basically designing more than one tech tree. It's a nightmare to balance and create for very little actual gain.

[Reelya]

Is there a 4x or Grand Strategy game which has a very diverging (not sure what else to call it) tech tree?
And by that, I mean that once you choose a path with your faction, you are barred from any other paths. And that AI factons have randomly selected their own paths as well.

Stellaris kind of does this with three ascension perk lines, but unfortunately not with the actual tech tree.

Kind of bothers me that too many (in my opinion) strategic games often has kind of linear technology.. lines.

I think one of the problems with that is that when you strip the semantics off things then you get down to the actual game-mechanics level. e.g. it's easy to say that this path leads you to laser weapons, and another path leads to plasma weapons, but those are just fluff: what really matters is what the gameplay mechanical difference between the two paths is when you strip the fluff away. And it's hard to make two different tech tree paths which cover everything, yet have meaningfully different gameplay after all the pseudoscience mumbo jumbo is stripped out.

Having said that however, one idea that comes to mind wouldn't be to bar different branches, but to make it so that specializing is cost effective. That could be achieved by 2 things: have the player able to build specialist research centers which are more efficient than generic ones, and have research centers "level up" over time. Then it wouldn't be trivial to change tack if you have a lot of investment in a particular field of development. You want to have this level of specialization, while rewarding long-term investment / knowledge in a particular field. in the real world we don't just have "research labs" we have Los Alamos nuclear research lab, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. With both, they have institutional investment over time into being really good at researching the kind of things that they do. Build a 4X game around that concept, and make it so that there are economies of scale: e.g. make it so that each "plasma" research center gets a speed bonus based on the total amount of other plasma research centers, and/or the total amount of plasma research ever done.

[RAM]

Aurora 4x has specialist researchers and you dtend to focus in some or other weapon fields, but it is not comprehensive in either of those vectors.

Was it, umm, Alpha Centauri? Masters of Orion? Something like that... They had multiple choice mechanics for researches, so you would choose one aspect of a technology and it would be difficult to get another. Like, say, you do the laser research, and you get little turreted missile-defence lasers or massive ship-length lasers but you can't generally get both of them.

[EnigmaticHat]

Galactic Civilizations 2 has divergent tech trees in the sense that they branch wildly.  But you're not locked in and the majorly divergent branches tend to be almost identical.

Alternately, the Twilight of the Arnor expansion gives every race its own unique tech tree that can be added to a custom race.  You can't mix and match and you're locked in from turn one, so its still not quite what you're looking for.

I think part of the reason developers do it this way is because real life doesn't have divergent tech trees.  Any two civilizations with regular contact trend towards having the same tech.

[RAM]

Oh yeah, Space Empires (IV, V) has racial technologies, and custom races that can buy racial technologies for points. So, like, only some races have access to, say, religious technology, but they are weaker in other respects because they had to buy it... On the other hand, you could say much the same about any game with racial traits that let's you as much as buy enhanced resistance to damage. That'll probably be enough to send your racial advantages into making resilient ships that otherwise wouldn't get as much bang for their defensive buck. So you would see more investment in armour from such a race even if all races had the same technologies available...

But then the same can be said, even more so I suppose, from the likes of Starcraft. They may all have basic attack and armour upgrades, but overall, the development of each player differs greatly based upon their in-game race.

[milo christiansen]

Metal Gear Solid V without the retarded story and with a few tweaks to make it more serious.

Replace the mother base with something smaller (a base in one corner of the main map would be perfect), recast the story as a small PMC doing missions for various employers, and open the world up a bit more (don't lock the player into a small part of the map during a mission). The "capture troops to recruit them" thing would have to go, but it could probably be replaced with your employer paying a bonus for enemy soldiers to question (higher rank == better bonus).

Really, that's it. Less "Metal Gear", more "Splinter Cell" or "Ghost Recon" story-wise, but using the MGSV engine and core gameplay.

[Cruxador]

You know Caesar III and Zeus and those old games?
You know Majesty?

Combine them.

City-building from the good old days, with a lot more depth than Majesty actually had, but also adventurers and interesting missions and way more compelling problems to face than "Caesar says build a city" every time.

Maybe increase the importance of guilds by having guilds, races, and other factions as entities within the game that you can have reputations with, which also prevents you from freely knocking down elven gambling halls or gnome hovels or other negative buildings.

[Parsely]

Always wanted a sci-fi Majesty that was a little ambitious and iterated on the mechanics.

As for an actual fantasy Majesty sequel/remake, I'm not interested in any ambition, I just want more Majesty but with better UI and hotkey shortcuts, decent graphics, and more quality of life features (like time speed features, or making it easier to quickly place bounties) and definitely some kind of multiplayer with some more structured modes on top of the freeplay that the original Majesty had. The modding community on Steam is apparently active though. Maybe I should look into that more...

[Dunamisdeos]

I remember Majesty (maybe it was 2?). It had a funny intro with a King and a Demon.

[Gatleos]

In Hitman 2016, trying to sneak while in view of someone else will raise suspicion. Walking generally does not (unless you're tresspassing/holding an illegal object/getting to close to one of the people you're disguised as).

Metal Gear Solid V without the retarded story and with a few tweaks to make it more serious.

You know, applying some of the more espionage-focused elements of MGSV and Hitman games to a higher-level management game could be cool.

The scenario could be something like a bank robbery, to keep it simple. Some kind of strategy game where you planned out a heist, getting information about a building and planning routes of entry. Many times it would be impossible for your crew members to get in without being seen, so the execution would mostly be in figuring out how to plausibly blend in (with disguises) or create distractions.

[AzyWng]

Metal Gear Solid V without the retarded story and with a few tweaks to make it more serious.

You...

You'd remove the cardboard box?

You truly have no idea what you're proposing are you, you... you demon! /s

The rest of the idea is quite compelling though. Maybe have it something like MGSV's Side Ops, but with more detail/story to them than just "Prisoner Extraction #0whogivesashit".

[JimboM12]

a good wrestling game made in a modernized version of the AKI engine, like no mercy. loved that game, loved it so much.
it would also contain every major name of wrestling in the last 40 years. (including both the young and old versions of Andre the giant *sheds gentle tear*)
it would contain a very robust creation engine, with none of that "super impose your face onto the character so you can be there!" shenanigans
a good campaign/career mode where you go from undercard NXT beginner matches to face offs against the rock (which you'll probably lose)
every iteration of the Undertaker. remember when he went hypergoth and literally looked like an undertaker before becoming a biker type? yeah that was cool
every alternate personality of mick foley. do you remember dude love? that shit was amazing.

it would also correctly display macho man's outfits, all 9000 of them.

i could go on about this but i'll end it here.