Favorite game mechanic you wish more RPGs would use?

[Zeus]

One of my favorite game mechanics is when an RPG gives players full HP and MP when they level up. It's basic, but it ALWAYS makes me like a game more.

Level up restorations lead to desperate, uphill battles with the player struggling to take out as many enemies as possible, even while they're on the verge of death, in hopes of getting that level up and restoring themselves to full HP.

When trying to imagine what this would look like in "real life", I realized that a level up restoration is analogous to a martial arts master having an in-battle epiphany that suddenly not only allows them to kick more ass, but revitalizes them. Anyone here see the movie Kung Fu Hustle? At the very end, the hero is getting his butt kicked, then he not only realizes how to use the Buddah Palm technique (new skill) he instantly recovers from his injuries and can fight full force (HP and MP up).

So how about you guys? What game mechanic do you wish more developers would include?

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Unwinnable boss fights.

 

[Unradscorpion]

Permadeath

 

[soggie]

Ironman.

 

[Severian Silk]

Action points in roguelikes.

 

[Fritz Haber]

I remember playing Thunderscape and the very same thing happened, level-up in a tough fight with trolls. Awesome. In the span of thirty minutes the whole
party levelled up, about three times. It felt like I had broke the game or something...

 

[mondblut]

No "MP". Stamina/strength/fatigue/endurance, expendable reagents, slot-based system, anything goes as long as it's not a large blue vessel ever-refillable from little blue bottles.

 

[Zeus]

No "MP". Stamina/strength/fatigue/endurance, expendable reagents, slot-based system, anything goes as long as it's not a large blue vessel ever-refillable from little blue bottles.

Paladin's Quest for SNES had no MP. Instead, magic spells drained your HP. A really damaging spell practically killed you, making magicians feel reckless and suicidal. :D

 

[Murk]

Combat abilities for warrior types that let them do something other than basic-attack.

Magic available in some capacity to non-mage characters, but with obvious limitations.

If a single-character game - actual different mechanics for various fighting/weapon styles. If group based game then same, but in a different scale (reach, amount of enemies hittable, number of attacks per round vs. damage of attack, etc.).

Echo of Mondblut's non-mana system. The paladin's quest games were neat in how they tried to be different but the extremely boring locales (looked cool, but that was all) and lack of storyline/characters worth caring about really killed it. I did like the HP is your only energy source system, and since many enemies requried magic to defeat it made it so you couldn't just be uber-fighters to counter balance but healing items were all over the place and easily refillable.

Did always find that jRPG habit of "medicine" as a HP restorative as a bit... weird.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Half-swording.

 

[crufty]

paying trainers for levelling; said trainers can only level you so far.

 

[Haba]

No "MP". Stamina/strength/fatigue/endurance, expendable reagents, slot-based system, anything goes as long as it's not a large blue vessel ever-refillable from little blue bottles.

Paladin's Quest for SNES had no MP. Instead, magic spells drained your HP. A really damaging spell practically killed you, making magicians feel reckless and suicidal. :D

Aleshar: World of Ice had the same, magic cost stamina. Draw too much power and your heart explodes.

Hate the kind of magic that comes without a cost.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

In "Betrayal in Antara", skills improved with use (à la TES) but you could also choose to tag up to five skills that you "researched". It meant they would increase when the character had some "off time" (like around the campfire). The improvement was not important, but it was nice. You could change the tagged skills anytime and choose to tag less than five, the tighter focus leading to faster increase.

 

[Shannow]

Action points and character system JA-style.

 

[Jools]

Permadeath

+1.

 

[SCO]

Mutable overhead map.
You know weather, seasons, travelers, scouting, etc.

 

[MetalCraze]

Turn-based combat.

 

[Black]

Game+ and interruptions

 

[TheCowburner]

Permadeath

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Advancement of time forcing players to actually actively carry out quests instead of sleeping off fatal wounds over the period of months.

Barter systems instead of static prices that are changed by a trade skill.

...and most of this thread so far.

 

[Orgasm]

Fully destructible world. Soil included.

 

[Liberal]

Mana, which slowly regenerates over time, and is refillable from bottles (see Morrowing). I imagine that the main character carries one sizable bottle of mana which he gulps from whenever he needs to push away his magical fatigue. I would like every use of magic potions to go with a dangerous side-effect, e.g. drinking a mana potion would not only restore your mana but also burn your health. But I don't know of any RPG that uses such a concept.

Static, hand-drawn map which you need to find and keep in your inventory instead of an interactive navigating system (See Gothic).

Magical duels (see Tale of a Mage mod for NWN).

Puzzles/fables that fit seamlessly into the game world (see Planescape: Torment).

Shadowy/secretive organizations that know most of what's really going on but won't tell anyone.

Spell failure that turns a spell into something undesirable rather than simply wastes it (a certain part in Hordes of the Underdark, Wild Mage class in BG2).

Cool, flowy wizard's robes and hats (Temple of Elementla Evil).

Worlds where magic is not a commodity for the populace (Thief).

 

[DriacKin]

You receive no XP for killing monsters. Instead, you receive XP only when you complete quest objectives. (ex: Bloodlines)

 

[Achilles]

Turn-based combat.

This, of course.

 

[Disconnected]

Phase-/turn-based combat.
Party-based combat.
Pre-combat auto-saves.
Permadeath.
Abundance of recruitable PCs.
Not being teleported into the arms of bossmonsters just because a stealthy PC got too close to some shitty script trigger.
Meaningful combat mechanics: as in not mindlessly hitting attack, and not being limited to casting the same 5 spells 5 times per day.
Vision & time that matters.
Story branches that utterly & irrevocably change the game world, or no story lines at all.
Skill-based dialogue that isn't labelled as such.
Getting nicked for nicking stuff.
Riddles.
Puzzles.
Traps that are more than XP dispensers for rogues.
Religious zealots and/or gods that actually do stuff.
Competing adventuring parties.
Objective-driven factions.
Randomly generated dungeons and wilderness.
Random encounters.

...

I'm just going to stop here, because.. It's getting depressing.