I know this question has been asked a billion trillion times lol but I'm curious because I'm working on my very own RPG and I been looking into what people like and don't like to see in RPG's and what they wish the games had. This isn't a question for games like the newer art style RPG games but ones with art style and game play like Brave Frontier and Eternal Sonata. What kinda cool features, battle system, attacks and so on would you like to see in games like these to make the best old school style type of RPG? My style is more leaning towards something like Battle Frontier so I'm looking for cool artists and programmers to help bring to life my awesome ideas. I'm almost thinking of basing the RPG off
my comic book series that I'm working on but I want to see how popular the series gets first I already taken down several notes and tips but a lot of these were from stuff posted a few years ago so I would like some fresh feedback so for games like I mentioned above... what would you like to see them feature that would make it one of the best old school style RPG games you ever played?!

Programmers?  Are you talking about a video game?  That would be about four forums down.

Yeah thought this was RPG video game post lol

Well, I reported it for you, and the moderators are likely to move it to the right forum where you can get an answer.

Ok, I'll answer this with my tastes in computer RPGs.

I like:
* Freedom of exploration and action.
* The ability to play successfully as a non-magic-user using tactics, skill, stealth, cunning, etc.
* Tactical realism and detail.
* Different styles of non-magic-user characters (different combos of equipment & skills for different play styles & tactics). In particular, the ability to make skilled agile characters that can actually have a decent chance to avoid getting hit via parry/dodge/block/evade/strike-first, not requiring everyone to have high armor and unrealistic battleaxe-resisting health to be a viable fighter.
* Meaningful actual options for interacting with NPCs in dialog.
* Permadeath with no saved game restoring, combined with a game that expects this and so makes starting over to be different and interesting each time, and not a repetition of a grind every new PC is made to do.
* Terrain and situations that shape what happens how. That is, there isn't just a map so you have something to see, but because the presence of walls and obstacles and terrain matters for detection, effects (slowing down, stumbling, difficulty of fighting in certain places), obstacles, density of combat (characters shouldn't be able to fight shoulder-to-shoulder let alone on top of each other).
* The ability and expectation to flee and avoid combat (unless surrounded or slower than pursuit) and have chases, and not be required to stand and fight to the death. NPCs should use this as well.
* The ability to be defeated and not have the game be over, due to live capture, ransom, etc.

I don't like:
* Being forced to follow one plot and/or to do things in one or two expected ways.
* Being forced to use magic.
* Combat systems with little/no way do avoid getting brutalized, and then that have fast healing and healing magic, so combat, even for types whose strategy I would expect to be to avoid getting hurt by skill, instead need to get cut up and then heal over and over, and the tanks too get their armor penetrated over and over and then have to heal up, and could never survive the adventure if not for the ridiculously fast healing and abundant magical healing.
* Combat systems where you are allowed and expected to drink potions during combat, especially healing potions, which exaggerates the previous point and even brings it into combat.
* Combat systems where injuring someone, even in ways that would be lethal in real life, has little or no effect on them unless/until you kill them, which takes way too much, which combined with the above means even if you hit someone first in the head with a battleaxe or .45 caliber pistol, they just turn around and hurt you back.
* Exaggerated experience curves where you start out challenged by rats, have to kill 50 rats to be able to take on dogs, have to kill 50 dogs to be able to take on wolves, then a few "levels" later are immune to any number of rats of wolves or even bears or armed soldiers, but still need to fear trolls but now need to fight 50 ogres, etc. Oh do I ever hate ridiculously stratified power curves that make most of the world either deadly to you or no threat at all.
* What I hate even more than that though, is RPGs which just scale the universe to match your level, making the difficulty of what you meet just another kind of wall to force you to follow the pre-planned plot. And the worstest of all, is as in for example Skyrim, where it's not even that by the end of the game, there are demons everywhere, but instead all the creatures of the world just level up as you do. This is the pinnacle of what not to do with game balance, IMO.
* Situations where you have to do something (beat a foe, solve a puzzle, whatever) and if you don't do that, there's nothing much left to do.
* Games that expect you to savescum.
* Games where food is modelled in silly gamey ways. Such as, it's just another kind of insta-heal object. (e.g. in Bethesda games, you can pause combat and eat 20 full meals to undo those major wounds there was no way to avoid...) (e.g. In many games where you need to eat at a ridiculous rate (compared to reality) and if you don't you die or quickly start to be incapacitated.)

I hate games where my non "stealth" character has absolutely no chance of avoiding wandering monsters.

Star Wars Old Republic Online does this right; even with my Jedi Guardian in his "heavy" Jedi stuff, if I'm lucky and cautious and pay attention I can avoid a lot of the wandering hungry creatures, pirates, Imperial patrols, etc.

I LIKE that.

When it comes to video games, usability is high in priority. Examples of things that are musts:

- able skip cut scenes, even if it's the first time

- tutorials are optional

- adjustable camera angles on-the-fly (unless it only makes sense to have the camera positioned in a certain way)

- thoroughly play-tested UI to make sure that it works and makes sense

- UI-related: making sure that it's colour-blind safe (if certain things are indicated by colour alone)