Akratus

Make magic use up stamina (AND soulpower or w/e replaces mana), heavy armor reduces stamina regeneration. BING BANG BOOM done.

A MELEE WIZARD!!

Also! A wound system. Nobody with 1 hp should realistically be able to run. They should be slow in walking and fighting.

Like the dwemer. Babylonian humanoid steampunk elves mistakenly called dwarves, ho!

Agreed. Seems easy enough not to have the game have to turn on 'combat mode' for combat.

Classes being replaced with a system where anyone can specialize in any small selection of skills(At least at the beginning, you can then specialize a little in a lot of skills or a lot in a few skills) from a non linear, no levels skill system.

I'd love to be able to create a character that uses heavy plate armor and magic.

You're not taking it far enough. The best armor should be intentionally ugly. But for serious, personally I think it'd be a nice bonus feature, but not necessary. I didn't need it in New Vegas, or any rpg that didn't have it for that matter.

Those aren't new. Orcs, Orks, Goblins and even trolls, tieflings, gnomes, demons, ugh. . most races in most fantasy games I've seen yet have been mostly very boring. Not necessarily the characters themselves but the race and it's history has always been pretty dull. It has never come close to being as crazy, diverse and interesting as our real world history. Just take a look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-mkVSasZIM Like in that blog post Sawyer made about that Black Hound game: http://twofoldsilenc...s-deal-was.html in this he talks about how interesting factions and peoples can be. I would LOVE to see original or even not at all original races (elves for ex.) to have such a diverse history. I don't want it to be: Elves are immortal and wise. I want it to be: There are many different groups of elves around the globe, they generally live longer than humans but not by much. Some have established high societies in advanced empires, and some have lived more natively. Relations between them and humans differ between regions, but racism between elves and humans is not uncommon. I don't just want races to be grey instead of black and white, but to have a diverse history and factions.

I would really love to see some tall dwarves.

When I can't sleep at night I start to conjur up fictitious games in my mind. How about a game with the same visceral combat as Diablo 2, that gives you that satisfaction to see enemies flinch, quiver, and roll around in their blood when they die? It would feature first person combat to make it as immersive as possible. With care taken to lessen such a view's restrictions. (FOV, visible feet etc) Melee weapons shouldn't be restricted to a single generic attack but the left mouse button would have the character swing it from left to right or right to left, the right mouse button would swing it in an upward motion and scrolling forward would stab, effective against the head/weak points of enemies, pressing the scroll button would block. Something like that. A group of players would cooperatively travel from village to castle to dungeon fighting increasingly professional enemies. Magic wouldn't be a huge array of spells with no basis in any logic (fictitious or otherwise) but would be made to fit best with the setting. It would be an adventurous, action filled fantasy action rpg which takes the best elements from many games, old and new. And that's just the basic idea. I'd like to think it's something new to break the mold. Why would someone, when designing a game, EVER think of using all the old fantasy tropes, all the old gamedesign elements, all the old design choices? Well perhaps not all, but most. Unrealistic stats, classes, generic restrictive skill development. These are not the things I think of in new games. Skill systems, dialogue, stats, character development, quests. There's so much left to explore in these. What about non-linear skills? An innovative and expansive character development system that not only allows the player to choose the strongest abilities, but allows them to create a real person with real abilities and flaws. Someone could make a character that uses shields and magic, one in each hand. Or a plate armor wielding warior that uses a sword and bow/arrows. Perhaps a character that wields light armor and a claymore? When Obsidian announced Project Eternity, I thought that they, like me, would be excited to build a new game that doesn't tread old ground. An innovative game that stands on it's own as one filled with expansive, innovative and choice filled systems. Which is what most dream rpg's are made of, no? Obsidian already does this with characters, storylines and factions. They've shown they are more than capable at that. Why not apply it to the gameplay as well? Why only dream of great stories, and settle for generic classes, elves, things like that? Why not be ambitious when you can?

The Witcher 2 style, anyone?

A reputation system, skill checks in dialogue and a speech skill and intelligence, perception, charisma stats are what I'd like to see.

I really don't like classes, I prefer a more realistic system. It really hampers the uniqueness of characters when they can only have certain combinations of abilities and weapons. I wish Obsidian were a bit more ambitious than this. Even if the classes were simply named: Melee, Ranged, Magic, Support and the like that's still a huge restriction. What if I wanted to be an archer who heals and have an awesome backstory in my head for that? What if I want to be a person who uses swords and bows, a pacifist or a person who uses shields and magic, or just his fists? The abilities and equipment of characters is tied to their backstory, design etc. So the quality of the story and the backstory for my character I can produce is limited if the abilities/equipment is too. And I do not like these limitations classes bring which are quite huge if you think about it. For most of us rpg fans the more ways we can define our role which we play the better it is. And since this game is not tied to a publisher and doesn't have as much focus on graphics, user friendliness and wow-factors, and the systems are being made from the ground up, I expected Obsidian to do things right based on what they want and not cling to old ways.