* What games would likely be your biggest influences?
* What genre would you be looking at?
* What difficulty level would you aim for (at least initially)?
* (Insert other relevant questions here)

Edit: Why the low rating here? (Especially since this topic has some interesting discussion in it.)

I’ve always dreamed of a Batman simulator. You manage his upbringing which changes his stats, you manage WayneCorp, and manage when he goes out and when he rests. And the city is simulated so you can go out yourself or automate time passing as you wait for events of significance. You build your own story, your actions create villains and heroes, and you in turn build Gotham.

Difficulty would range by your actions and story elements. If something gets too tough, you retreat and experience the consequences.

That would be if I had limitless resources.

In reality, I’d make something in RPG Maker with varying levels of difficulty, mostly due to inexperience.

I'm going to change the initial premise to: If I were to have a game made... (because I'm not a game development team)
- A scifi/horror 3rd person immersive sim
- Influences: System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Ultima Underworld, Planescape Torment, Deadly Premonition, Event Horizon, David Lynch, ...
- Difficulty: Any (I care about the experience, not the challenge)

I'd make the music myself.

No particular game but elements from several different games likely to fit the idea of the game to be. For instance in my case this is chopping wood from Timber Man, including music both influencing how fast or slow the game goes, which determines the overall difficulty of a stage which would be BPM/Beat Hazard, Metronomicon, environmental effects where a sting of a bee will cause hero or heroine to slow down considerably - consider how difficulty spikes when playing to some speed metal song, when not chopping with fists but using an axe or chainsaw you could get hit by lightning, branches can catch fire, a tree could explode so you not only have to move from left to right to avoid being hit by branches but also flying splinters, rain which could cause you to slip which can go for or against you in that if you fall and would have been hit by a branch otherwise you remain to live another couple of chops, more than one tree to chop down as in Rampage (C64), a hunting season where if the stage is set to be at a lake or in the middle of a wood clearing it is likely for a hunter or hunters to show up shooting, duck away quick enough - a mechanic only available in those stages as new mechanic, and several other things I'm toying around with.

So the answers in order:
As many as possible to identify different elements that could work in my game.
Crossover. Most games nowadays can't be stuck in boxes labeled RPG, Action, (Text)-Adventure, Strategy, Sports etc. anyways.
A range influenced by skill and choice of a player instead of number magic.

Q: Which framework would you use to realize your idea?
What would you think is the best one for your task and why?
Which programming language would you learn if you didn't know any?
Without prior programming knowledge would you use Gamemaker and what else they are called?
With programming knowledge which would you use?
2D? 3D? Which will it be?

If perma-death is *not* enabled, what would happen when the player dies?

As for the game I'd make:
* SaGa Frontier would be the biggest influence, though there'd be some influence from other games, mainly other CRPGs. (Perhaps look at the original Dragon Quest's open world, for example, or Wizardry/Bard's Tale for bigger enemy groups, or SaGa 1/2; also toying with a Majora's Mask-like time system, but that's uncertain and might not make the cut. Also, maybe take some aspect of Final Fantasy 5? But then there's the feature creep issue.)
* It would be a turn-based RPG. It might be what I would call a SaGa-like (after all, I did cite a SaGa game as the biggest influence.)
* I'd aim for the game to be relatively easy at first, but getting harder as the game goes on, with the bonus dungeon having normal enemies on par with Dragon Quest 2's Rhone Plateau.

By "perma-death" I mean also deleting the save file when you die (i.e. no reloads). With that option disabled, you would be able to reload a save when your character dies.

* No influences, I'm into doing my own thing because nobody else is doing what I want
* There is no name for the genre I'd be making, not that I know of. If it appeared on GOG, they'd slap on some very generic and nondescript tags like FPP and Adventure, possibly Mystery or Simulation. Of course, a game so niche as to not even belong in any existing genre would be too niche for GOG.
* Difficulty is a complicated concept but for my games it'd likely go roughly like this: finding an end is very easy, finding the true canonical ending can be nightmarishly difficult / borderline impossible. Mechanically, some things in the game can be extremely difficult, but those things are not required for completion (for example, driving a car, playing an instrument, or fighting the apocalypse might be difficult, but none of them are mandatory for completion). There will be very little direction or hand holding, so getting lost and confused would be easy, but the main consequence of getting lost is just wasting time. Also there's no difficulty selection, but the game may announce it at the start (similar to Higurashi)
* (questions are irrelevant)

Most if not all games with permanent death mechanic have one flaw. As long as you don't die and the save state is present on the player's drive they can save scum the hell out of it and still win. To avoid this create a unique id for saves that's valid for as long as the player doesn't die. If they die all states are invalidated and they have to start over as they are supposed to.

I'd do a Roguelike with permadeath but persistent worlds.
You create a campaign and a character, then when that character dies, you make a new character who appears in the same world. If Character One opens up a shortcut between the starting area and a later zone, Character Two can go straight to that later area. Doing quests for NPCs in hub areas means those areas grow over time and offer new services to later characters. When you die, your options for creating a new character are partly randomised, and partly based on what training opportunities are available in their starting location (which is, of course, based on what your previous characters brought back).

So in terms of influences- Rogue/Nethack/etc, obviously, Souls, and a bit of ZombiU (which had some neat ideas, even if it wasn't a good game overall).

I don't know what type of game it would be or any of that but I know it would be one of the most offensive ever made.

The dream of every edgy teenager.

I haven't been a teenager in decades, but okay.

There was a game on the playstation 1, called Revelations Persona. It has blossomed into some super huge franchise and while I never cared for the later games as much and haven't even played most of them, I liked how they handled a few things in the first game..

I liked the transistion between first person dungeon crawling, to the semi isometric view when you got in a shop or sometimes visiting the school you were going to, you would go from first person dungeon crawling to school room where you could walk around in the isometric way and look for chests or stuff in the potted plants (yeah rpg logic > _ >).

Outside of those elements I did like, I did not like the velvet room, or rather the way that was handled. I was never into pokemon or card games. I don't hate them, I just didn't care for them, so that whole aspect was off to me. I liked being able to "contact" enemies and chat with them in combat, the system needed some help, it wasn't perfect but I felt that was actually cool that it was there..

So that is a game I'd definitely rip some ideas from, maybe not copy paste, but there were a few things I liked about it. I hate (even then questioned) why is it always teenagers who seem to have all this happen to them, and I realize they were marketing to who was gonna be playing these games at the time. The game did not age well, but not many do. It also was not very difficult if you were really into the type of game style, first person dungeon crawling really. The puzzles in the dungeons were probably the hardest part, and a lot of that was dealing with 1 ways and how to get around them.

Another thing I'd like to see some of is "time travel" or different times in the same "timeline" but handled well. There was a game called Chrono Trigger that people say was some ultimate RPG and I don't feel that way. It was ok on the SNES but, I never liked how if you didn't loot a chest that was sealed in a certain way you got a more powerful item later on in time. I realize video game logic is at play, but I was like if I put my hand gun in a box and check on it 2 years later, it's still my handgun, not handgun XXL with laser beam ammo. There STILL could be interesting elements of some time manipulation tho in a game, maybe the people alive at different ends of the spectrum can communicate in some manner, or have visions of each other.

Difficulty should be adjustable tho, I knew people who loved playing video games but they were not the most strategic minds on the battlefield so to speak, and they would be slaughtered by kobolds on the first floor etc. Magic and "magical items" seem to be a lot of what people play games for, but I'd risk being a little less magically delicious and possibly a little more science/sci-fi with some dabs of magic for good measure. I'd also probably venture into the material components territory but I wouldn't make it ultra sloggish in that regard. I'm not sure about a fatigue system, while it sounds cool in the drawing room, most games I've played with anything of a fatigue/hunger system it winds up becoming extremely unenjoyable making sure I ate enough mushrooms or whatever to be able to fight. I think that's more of a table top ingredient and should remain there, I don't know what or how to make it more entertaining. Maybe steal an aspect of mmorpg's and make the food give some temporary buffs. Another thing I like is how Grand Theft Auto San Andreas let you lift weights for some benefits and you could see your character change as you began to lift. Perhaps as a perk system, your characters could invest in training of some kind between outings, and gradually over time your beef cakes can become beefier, and your cupcakes can become cuppier.. Or something.

I'll leave my ramblings here. If I were going to design a game I'd probably have elements of this stuff in it. I am somewhat understanding a story is good to have, but if your game sucks it just doesn't matter how convincing World Eater Joe is of a villain, the game play sucks and I'll be content to let him just eat the world and maybe watch a youtube play through if I'm just dying to know how it got handled.

Well, what game I would like to make always depends on what I am currently playing.
There was a time when I thought about making a SRPG that uses a similar engine as Silent Sentinel and has the story forking of Tactics Ogre. But that game would escalate really quickly in scope and size.
Another idea was making an ARPG that uses similar design ideas as Din's Curse, but isn't toal jank and doesn't play like stilted ass. Man that game has some really nice ideas, but plays so terrible.
One game would be a city builder similar to the Max Design Anno titles.
And last but not least: A 3D remake of Terranigma.

But since I can't get my shit together, none of that will ever happen.

In terms of difficulty, I am a big fan of slow start until all of teh mechanics are introduced and then it ramps up pretty nicely until a certain level.