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[IndigoFenix]

A Lord of the Rings strategy game where you play as Sauron.

I've always imagined Sauron to be basically like the player in an RTS.  He can see anywhere, but only in one place at a time, and can either control his units directly or give them general instructions.  Your objective is to take over Middle Earth.  Getting the Ring would give you access to much more powerful abilities but beyond that it would be similar to a standard RTS with a branching storyline depending on the choices you make.

To prevent the player from gaming the system by virtue of knowing what happens in the story, the Ring could potentially wind up in a number of possible scenarios, both based on RNG and also the decisions of the player impacting the AI, who is trying to keep it out of your hands.  It could end up being stolen by Boromir, or used by Aragorn, or given to Galadriel, or utilized by Saruman, or thrown into the sea, or picked up by Gollum, or lost and found by some random NPC.  The enemy units would make rational decisions, but the AI could also "cheat" somewhat since your enemy is Eru.

When someone puts on the Ring, you get an alert and a "hot or cold" meter would appear, depending on how far away the Ring is from your current viewing position.  You can use this time to try and locate the Ring or at least get a general feel for which direction it is.  You can encourage this by sending units in the general direction that you think the Ring is.

The final boss would be Tom Bombadil, who could wipe out like a hundred orcs with one attack.

[Parsely]

This isn't a video game, and it's not an RPG, but you can play as the armies of Mordor in War of the Ring https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgooNB8Ck0

[FallacyofUrist]

You know all those champion games? Dota 2, League of Legends, Overwatch? Games where you choose from a variety of heroes with their own special abilities?

I'd like to see a game where you could create your own hero and customize him or her to your heart's content.

[Reelya]

You know all those champion games? Dota 2, League of Legends, Overwatch? Games where you choose from a variety of heroes with their own special abilities?

I'd like to see a game where you could create your own hero and customize him or her to your heart's content.

It's a nice idea however it would be hard to avoid having a completely broken system with everyone making the same 1-2 builds. It's likely that only a very small number of possible builds end up being competitive, unless you completely nerf the diversity of what traits do. There was some RPG game that was the spiritual successor to another, made by the same devs, but they wanted to add an "all builds are viable" ethos into it. The sad fact was that this sounds great on paper, but effectively ends up meaning "the traits you choose don't actually make any great difference and no combo is any better than any other possible combo".

Also, the advantage of preset heroes from a multiplayer balance perspective is that if one hero is too overpowered you can nerf just that one guy, whereas if you have a mix and match traits system, to change the traits on one broken / exploit combo you need nerf an entire traits or stat used by everyone's heroes, just to account for that one exploity build, which breaks everyone else's finely tuned builds to account for the minmaxers.

[RAM]

It is worth remembering that Aeon of Strife was a custom map, and pretty much defined the genre. There are a lot of different games with similar abilities to make custom modes, and some of these games have character customisation. Warcraft Three has had some hero customisation projects, and while few of them have been successful, it is not impossible to find such a thing. I also recall an A.S. map for Neverwinter Nights(Battle of the Dragons?) which obviously had a boatload of customisation from Dungeons and Dragons the Third. So they are out there, and you probably want to look for a game with custom heroes, either natively or as a known skill amongst its modding community, and then look for the inevitable A.S.-likes and see how much overlap there is. And then get together a group to play it because it probably won't be popular enough to get a decent game together, given that customisation makes measuring contests difficult, and the A.S.-like community is mostly terrible.

[KittyTac]

A shoot 'em up where the enemies use machine learning to learn your fighting tactics and use the knowledge to adapt their strategy.

[NRDL]

A shoot 'em up where the enemies use machine learning to learn your fighting tactics and use the knowledge to adapt their strategy.

What's the perspective in your mind? First person, over the shoulder, isometric, overhead?

[KittyTac]

A shoot 'em up where the enemies use machine learning to learn your fighting tactics and use the knowledge to adapt their strategy.

What's the perspective in your mind? First person, over the shoulder, isometric, overhead?

Overhead.

[PTTG??]

A shoot 'em up where the enemies use machine learning to learn your fighting tactics and use the knowledge to adapt their strategy.

I think it could be simpler by using evolutionary adaptation. The longer a minion survives and the more damage it does to you, the more weighted it is in the next wave.

The key is that the evolving genetics are not the stats themselves (or the minions would quickly evolve to maximize all traits), but rather the priority for the distribution of a set number of points to the various stats. So bosses would get more set points than minions and so on, but they might all have the same dDNA.

Maybe make it so that there's multiple species just to keep it diverse.

[Reelya]

It really depends on the type of game.

For example are we talking top down shooter like a bullet hell type of thing? If you apply machine learning to the enemies in a bullet hell game, they definitely will get better a killing you, but I very much doubt that playing it would be any fun. The optimal strategy would be just to blast a solid wall of bullets at you that can't be dodged. Programming the thing would be heaps of fun, not playing it though.

However, one thing that can create a fun game is to have an AI learning to play the game vs AIs trying to stop them. Then, the enemies can get smarter but you can show that the game is still winnable.

[PTTG??]

The key is to limit the AI with hard limits that it can still use in creative ways, much like how Chess has rules and no AI can just learn the strategy "move all pawns forward every turn."

Maybe the learning AI in top-down shooter can only have a limited number of shots in flight, and it only has so many ships it can send per unit time?

[RAM]

You could make it a gimmick that you ARE fighting a stupid A.I.. I would avoid too much stat weighting, as that tends towards harder counters. You end up with your all-damage build being swarmed by fast+tough that overwhelm your damage output. Your speedy build gets out-speeded and can't escape, it is just a bit too much of a methodical assassination. But if they follow paths which resulted in fewer deaths...
This reminds me of my ancient idea of tunnelling D.F. goblins. Tunnelling would have a high "distance multiplier" and the goblins would generally take the shorter route. Goblin deaths would also add distance. And their end-goal would be based upon how far ambushers and sieges(and snatchers and caravans, rumours and all...) had gotten previously and lived to tell the tale(with a few exceptions to keep them sensible...) so they would generally route to a point in your murdertube unless your fort had already been mostly broken once. Eventually they would accrue so many deaths that the open-path's length plus additions for previous deaths would outweigh the 40 steps-per-tile or whatever that soil would have and they'd dig a shortcut to a deeper point in your defences... They'd probably form squads and make a path for each squad collectively at the start of the siege to save on processing given that it would be pathing through solid tiles... then squads could go off to their objectives and the individual members would run around the squad trying to be helpful to its objectives...

Something similar could work in a shoot'em'up. The A.I. would start to avoid places where loads of them had died previously, and teleporters would jump over it or whatever. Meanwhile they have bonus options they can use if they get desperate, like adding spawns or moulding the terrain or what have you, should the player just refuse to die. And anything that resulted in player damage would be given added weight. It would be simple and predictable, but if it was up front about it, outright stated that you were fighting stupid robots that could be manipulated into evolutionary dead-ends... well, it would be a game of bluffing your weaknesses and saving your strengths...

[Eric Blank]

Ive kind of always wanted a game that mixed orbital/interstellar ship to ship warfare with planetary invasions including land, air and sea combat, at both a grand strategy and first person combat level. Like a 4x space game kinda like stellaris, but with better tactical options where you can give individual ships orders during combat, not just fleet wide, and ground warfare that is rendered and dependent on vehicles and infantry you brought with you. instead of just plopping armies down on the planet and watching their health go down you can actually make decisions on the battlefield, and take control of any one of your units. And where you could design your space and planetary units in depth and describe their desired behaviors

Its like a stupid tall order and probably nobodies ever gonna make a game like that, but its the sort of awesome i wish i could play.

[Persus13]

So like Star Wars: Empire at War?

[Eric Blank]

Sorry i had to make an edit there, but yeah empire at war was loads of fun. It just got all samey after a while, because there was the limited number of planets, and maps, and units. And then it started crashing to desktop constantly without warning