you've taken the words right out of my mouth

Rise of Nations Gold:

Get rid of that darn 90 minute time limit for battles. Everything else is pretty much perfect, but that destroys the game.

You make lots of good suggestions, but I disagree with two:

Come on! By adding a few autopause options, you can make it pretty much turn-based. After all, you can even add autopause after each turn, doesn't that alone make it pretty much turn-based?

By default there were too few enabled autopause options, but after you add a few, I felt the battle system was great. I normally prefer turn-based combat in RPGs to realtime, but BG's system is great. To me it felt closer to turn-based than realtime.

Noooo! I think that was great. I feel Baldur's Gate (and other Infinity engine RPGs I've played) are almost the only RPGs I've played where a thief character has real use (to detect and disarm traps, as well as using him/her as a scout so that you don't step into ambushes). I guess it had some backstab option too, but I never really used it.

In most CRPGs a thief character is kinda meh. So what if a thief can break into people's houses or pick pockets in TES: Arena; I already have more than enough money even without such ability.

You know, the first day they create a game with a building that falls over flat when I try to open the door (you know, like the 2D prop buildings they used in "Blazing Saddles") I'm probably going to get a good laugh out of it.

But but that was the best part of the game!

With respect to turn-based versus real-time, one thing is that turn-based battles have a nice rhythm to it. Real-time battles, even with BG-style auto-pause, lack that rhythm; if you play with auto-pause options enabled, you will find that the game pauses frequently at irregular intervals. The other thing is that it is easier to tell what is going on in turn-based battles. In BG2, if one of your characters gets killed, it is not exactly obvious what caused it; you need to scroll through the messages to notice that a certain enemy cast Finger of Death, and there may be many messages in between. That doesn't happen in turn-based battles. (The inability to view the combat log after death makes the whole issue worse if it happens to the main character; there's no way to learn what killed you so you can learn to avoid it next time.)

For thief skills, my opinion is that thief-type classes should not be mandatory. Either make them useful without the game forcing you to have them (for example, skills like Set Traps and Detect Illusions), or eliminate them entirely. The problem with traps is that they punish players for doing something reasonable (that is, exploring), and that they make a specific class mandatory. It also doesn't help that Baldur's Gate 2 has a rather poor selection of thieves; there is no single class thief that you can use in the later part of the game!

Now for something different: The Ultima Series

Ultima 4:
Remove all reagents except Nightshade and Mandrake. Spells that don't require either reagent now require no reagents to use (but still require MP).

Ultima 5:
Remove reagents (as above).
Introduce the Help spell from later Ultimas. This spell would additionally have the effect of Lord British's ghost appearing and leveling up anyone with enough experience (instead of having to rely on RNG for this). Spell is level 1 and requires no reagents, just like in Ultima 6 and 7, and would leave you in Lord British's (empty) throne room.
Reduce the level of the Gate Travel spell.
Make Shadowlords not appear randomly in towns. (Alternatively, at least make it so that you won't see Shadowlords in the same town two days in a row.)

Ultima 6:
Remove reagents (as above, but remove Nightshade as well).
Get rid of separate inventories; instead, have inventory work like in Ultima 5.
Add an optional bonus dungeon, to compensate for the lack of combat in the endgame.

Ultima 7:
Make the game turn based.
Remove reagents (as above).
Get rid of separate inventories (as above).
Eliminate the need to eat; food items could instead act as minor healing or MP recovery.

Ultima 7 part 2:
Everything from the Ultima 7 section. (Exception: One of the new reagents might be worth keeping, but make sure only powerful spells that need that limiting factor require it.)
Add a spellbook with some basic spells in it, available at the beginning of the game, immediately after losing your initial equipment. At the point you would normally get a spellbook, you would instead be able to buy (or be outright given) a whole bunch of new spells.
Reduce the amount of dialogue.

Wouldn't it be better to have a an option for it to be turn based? Real time strategy and real time management is a skill and requires honing.

I remember when a popular patch made multiple building training que possible in AoE2. It allowed multi select of training buildings and automatically distributed the units among the selected buildings for faster train time instead of all units training in one. But the community was divided so they placed it in as an option and everyone was happy. This seems similar.

The problem is that real time strategy and real time management is not an aspect of the RPG genre, and therefore really doesn't belong in a game claiming to be an RPG.

I wouldn't say such elements are bad; just that they don't belong in that particular genre. It would be like a game that claims to be an action game requiring the player to solve Sudoku puzzles to progress. Solving Sudoku puzzles is a skill and requires honing.

Hmm seems sensible. But RPG is very loose as a term and someone can in the future maybe make a game with roleplaying elements that has time and micro management as an essential skill. But it is not the first thing that comes to mind when you mention ''RPG''. Maybe it is down to preference then.

Final Fantasy 7 (note: this post contains a spoiler):

Allow cutscenes and story sequences to be skipped

Remove mini-games from the main game. Instead, they would only appear in the Gold Saucer, and would not have any rewards that would impact the main game. (This includes things like the motorcycle riding sequence and sledding down the hill.)

Make Aeris playable for the entirety of disks 2 and 3. (Note that I would not change the story to reflect that; Aeris would be playable without any story explanation.)

Every character gets useful non-attack Limit Breaks.

Similarly, Summon list reworked, with fewer attack summons and more support summons (like Golem).

Limit meter works like the IP in Lufia 2, filling up based of % of current HP rather than % of maximum HP.

Game difficulty increased, but status ailments remain effective on enemies. Also, the game should be better balanced. (Square was really bad about game balance around the time of the game's release.)

Add more Command Materia based off interesting abilities from earlier in the series, like Jump (remove user from battle temporarily, then land to do increased damage) and Mix (mix consumables to produce sometimes powerful effects). (Why did they keep Throw and not Mix anyway?)

Materia should have more negative stat effects. Characters loaded with magic materia shouldn't be able to do good physical damage, while giving a character a materia like Double Cut should severely penalize that character's spellcasting.

Magic should use a formula similar to physical attacks so it doesn't become obsolete later.

Ultimate weapons should be toned down; a normal attack shouldn't do more than about 4k damage under typical circumstances, and that should only be possible for characters not loaded down with magic.

Huge Materia should require optional dungeons (of normal difficulty) to be completed instead of minigames.

Knights of the Round should cost 1000 MP to use, and its damage should be reduced a bit. (1000 MP makes this spell impossible to cast without a certain other materia that is risky to use.)

I worked with the scripts for Dragon Age Origins forever trying to make that game TB for a friend. I just couldn't get it going.

MDK 3

- reassemble Shiny to make it

Sudoku

Probably one of the most boring games in existence, simple, yet basic math. Turn it into a full-contact sport.

Hahaha!

Like Chess boxing?