Okay, so…I think we could inspire a few people here as well as myself… let’s brainstorm, what would be the coolest thing ever to see in an RPG?/what would you like to see or play around with?
A completely non-violent RPG.
You still have stats, you still have abilities, you even still have general ‘levels’…but, violent acts are not what preciptate character advancement.
Give that one a shot.
You CAN still kill but those acts won’t affect advancement
Edit: What if your character advances purely through exploration, discovering the story/backstory and profession more than anything else? Most of the time I tend to neglect the storyline
I would like something fresh. I’m more into Japanese Role Playing Games but I like a good challenge and a game that makes me think in battle, turn based (like Persona 3 and Persona 4) and probably a good story that I can’t guess and I can affect?
There is a lot of different kinds of pen and paper RPGs. It would be great to see video games that are not only inspired by a specific type of RPG. I want to see more games without levels, skills, XP, etc, and without combat mechanics. Heavy Rain and The Walking Dead series are good examples of this. They were generally not called RPGs, but mechanically and conceptually are much closer to their pen-and-paper counterparts than those who are usually labeled as role-playing games.
You can KILL but then, depending on the circumstances, it may affect you as a person. I’m not talking about stats or anything similar. I mean: Ask the player. How do you feel about what just happened? Do you think it was worth going to jail for this? As a game designer, you can turn the act of playing a game into a conversation rather than a monologue. Use the real emotions of the player to shape the character and history of which he is part. Need a stat to determine how distressed is the character? It might be useful, but why not ask the player how he feels? The player can then answer honestly, or consciously decide what part of the character he would like to explore. Maybe you don’t feel good about that, but want to see what happens if your character refuses to accept that it was wrong. Both options are equally fine.
I’m actually really liking this. How exactly, would the player explore different parts of the character, or what would compel the player to take such interest? I think I can speak on behalf of most people, I don’t really like sitting down to read a book, haha.
I’m also a big fan of the idea of the player not having the ability to kill, and so the game turns into asking the player, “How can I survive?” or “what can I do to overcome this… etc.”
true, I guess in real-time battles it’s hard to change the long-term course of the battle. look, in all honesty, if I had a pet monkey… I’d be more than happy
world and all objects interactions, including useless objects.
A more in-depth crafting system. Lean away from the ones used by (fantastic for other reasons) Monster Hunter and bring in something more like Minecraft.
But that’s the point: Most games are like sitting down to read a book, at least in the story part. It’s like: You can do whatever you like, always that it doesn’t intefere with My Story. You know those games that let you decide many things, but then the characters do what they please during the cut-scenes? Maybe you don’t want to kill the traitor but forgive him, but the character kills him anyway, because is the designer story, not yours.
I’m talking about letting the player decide on the important stuff, like his story and even the drama of the character itself, not only when to run or jump or shoot. I’m not saying that the traditional way is not right, it is, and it has been effectively used for years. But the fact is that it has already been done maybe too much, and would be good to explore other possibilities, such as making the story interactive, not just the physical actions of the characters.
That’s sounds good, but it’s not what I was talking about. I’m talking about making games that are not about action but about personal drama, and if there are action scenes is because the story, or the player’s decisions, require it, to increase the drama, not for the player to experience a moment of adrenaline . Most RPGs are about action or tactical combat. I like tactical combat, but the fact is that there is too much fantasy in RPGs, and in video games in general. I want more real life stuff in my video games, with or without fantasy in the mix.
On the other hand, a tactical turn-based combat videogame, set in a contemporary or slightly futuristic war, could be very interesting. Few units, each with its own history and personality, in front of a contemporary landscape of destruction. No abstract mechanics at all. Just real life soldiers, facing real life situations. I don’t know. I like it.
Being able to have a real conversation with the characters (voice input).
Being able to enter the world and walk around in it using a VR and full body* input/feedback system.
*Well maybe not everything 
Unicorns… I can’t remember an RPG with Unicorns.
Does Oblivion not count as an RPG?
Are we talking Eastern RPG, or Western RPG? They’re two different genres.
Okay I think I’m starting to understand what you mean here. Let’s say he chooses not to kill the boss we has meant to. The boss the extends his reign of power and thus to defeat him the process must begin from the start again? Wait no, could you provide me an example? It’s hard to fully wrap my head around, I don’t play games a lot
Yeah I like it. Pragmatic crafting,
Woo I have unicorns :')
I dream of things like this… Hahaha
I’d like to see role playing. And no, I’m not being facetious.
In other words, I’d like to see decision making that influences character development in meaningful ways with flow on effects that provide a high degree of player agency in the world, rather than decision making that just effects how future combat plays out (which is all that most RPGs seem to care about these days).
I know that that still doesn’t cover “role playing” the same way than pen and paper RPGs do, but it’s still a form of role playing and it’s far more than most so-called RPGs bother with. It’s also, to me, what makes them interesting.
Oh right, someone’s already covering what I was getting at. 
For an example I’d suggest comparing something like The Witcher to Diablo. The former involves combat and all that jazz, but at its core its a game about decisions and consequences. On the other hand, Diablo is a game about killing things, and not a lot else. Both are called “RPGs”, but The Witcher involves some form of role playing (you take the role of a character in a world and have some impact on that world based on the decisions you make and the acts you perform), where in Diablo all you really do is collect loot and upgrade combat abilities - outcomes and characters never change as a result.