Have you ever played a game and wondered what if you could do something that it doesn’t really allow you to do, for example being able to move around blocks in Minecraft fluidly instead of in sectors, edit the world in Hogwarts legacy with spells, be able to fly in a world like Elden Ring or Elder Scrolls with epic sky battles, have a sims game that simulates more than just sims needs, but whole economies, or a dystopian horror game set in a Minecraft style world. So I was wondering if anyone else had similar ideas for games or fantasies for possible games?
What’s your ideas for games that doesn’t really exist, or might not even really be possible to make?
One limitation that games like Civ suffer from is that diplomacy is ultimately pretty shallow because there can only be one winner, so even when you’re building alliances or trading relationships it is generally to gain some temporary benefit until you are in a position to defeat your partner later on (whether militarily, scientifically, etc).
What I would love to see is a multiplayer game like Civ but where each player has independent win conditions (so that a game could have multiple winners, or no winners). The condition could even just be to attain a certain level of happiness or wealth. And if you achieve that then you win even if other nations are bigger or stronger, and conversely if you don’t achieve it you lose even if you are the last nation standing. So decisions to go to war, or focus on technological development, or build alliances or trading relationships, etc, are driven by the wants and needs of your own people and not just a need to dominate others.
This is exactly what made me gravitate away from Civ games and more towards Paradox strategy, where the AI actually behaves more like a real country would do instead of a player trying to win a game.
It’s been decades since I last played a civ game, and never played multiplayer, but I thought they had a version of this?
I was much younger then and only interested in battles and spectacle, so never tried them, but I do remember other victory conditions beyond kill everyone else.
There are multiple victory conditions in civ like science, culture, war, and so on. But only one player can win still, no matter what condition they use, which is the main point OP was trying to make
There are definitely other win conditions, but it’s still winner-takes-all. So say if an ally is really strong scientifically or culturally it inevitably becomes in your interest to destroy them.
I think I’d like that if there was a single winner as well. Something like to win you need to complete two objectives, one public and one secret. So other players can still work against you but they dont know what you’re trying to do.