well , i observe more than play , i like watching the key elements of what made certain games stand out and try to think how it would be implemented in in code and also i like to find what made me feel it sucked so as to see what rather not to do , the best thing about rts is i would say mostly it is possible for indie developers to create great rts games because most of the focus is on gameplay and not all on eye candy

yes, nowadays I have been doing the same when playing, watching what happens and how own and enemy units react, it can be a great source of ideas, beside reading articles written by rts game developers, and comparing them to my solutions, what to modify and what to keep. (of course it decreases the gaming experience)
it can be 2-3 years for a little programmer team (2-3 (wo)men) to develop a great rts game ai, so what I know is that I can do this hobby for a long time and beside game play programming I can learn the visual stuff too as a recreation. the main problem of the open source rts game 0.a.d. is that they did a lot of work on the graphics, but let the pathfinding and ai in a very unefficient basic level, thus after years it is still not really playable... I hope I can find a better development way.

i meant ambience not atmospere haha ..
yip there is a certain amount of balance that is key to funtionalty and something that stands out to me is balance of what is good and bad about a game , if you have something in your game that you think is really good ,someone will think it sucks and vice versa so as there are things in games that i think is to be avoided some people may think the opposit so there must be a sort of balance in features or gameplay so that people by their nature of being different would find something they like about that game , i guess thats part of having a diverse customer range

Hi I like to say something as to the OP idea of the thread. I know we are talking about game ideas and unique mechanisms. When this forum was flooded with flash newbies we would get every week the " Lets all team up and make a clone of -X popular- game." I posted once making fun of this group with a silly idea that I will restate here but Also include a area that I think is under served in gaming.

So in vain of the Scary Movie franchise I like to suggest the comedic parody games. There is always that popular game line that "you" may just not like. At the time the newbies were posting that game for me was the GTA set. So I suggest a parody making fun of the whole idea of GTA set in medieval time, call Grand Theft Horse GTH. But I was really thinking now that a cool game would be a combo parody were it is making fun of a different popular game in each level.

Ok long post for my 2-cents.

a balanced game play is a heavy thing I know, it requires a long testing period, and a lot of testers (who can mod/tweak the game simply by e.g. editing text files), and a good source of collecting further ideas. it is difficult for an indie developer to collect a large tester team, but this feature has another advantage, in connection with what you mentioned: the taste of each player cannot be satisfied, but if a game is easily moddable, it can increase popularity, as a modding community can emerge and grow, thus your game can be developed more easily taking into account their work.

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grand theft horse crazy idea, I mean good! with some fight features like in mount&blade. and with buying selling stolen things. and finally make a group of raiders.

@Wjbender: I checked Age of Empires 3, and the funny thing in its pathfinder is that large units has only a 1x1 tile sized collision size, similarly e.g. to infantry. I was really surprised in such a quality game.

A game where you control KarBOOM-style cute cars (maybe with a Super Mario Galaxy graphics style), drive at high speed and can grind on rails and edges like in Skateboarding games. There can be ramps and halfpipes (thus tricks) as well, maybe even small wings/ boosters like in San Francisco Rush 2049 so you can rotate the car in the air.

The speed could be incredibly fast like in Extreme-G or F-Zero GX and have either 3dimensional twisted maps as in the latter game or be limited to two dimensions (except grinding) as in F-Zero for SNES.

The game could go for a Trackmania style gameplay where you cannot collide with your enemies and drive multiple laps but go from A and B again and again to get the best time (a surprisingly fun way to play), where the latter version is much easier to implement.

, don't you miss moments like these? (0:15 -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0YpAkbI_W4)

Games likes Twisted Metal are nice I think. Should not be too much work if do a few unique cars (like 6 to choose from).

Maybe something like virtual cop or house of the dead gamestyle with some original weapons. A bit more work I quess, with all the mapping and scripting. Although an random gameplay mode could be added (randomized enemies, items, the different routes to take) to give it some replaybility and that it doesn't get old to fast for the gamemaker (than you have atleast one happy customer :P).

Or maybe some horror/puzzle game like The 7th Guest.

, this sounds cool, reminds me a bit of this http://phoenix.ee/gallery/photos/Unreal%20Tournament/955436898-1.jpg. That was a map with 3 skycrapers where you could jump from one to another with low gravity. Very fun to play.

Guns vs Nuns.

A catholic nun from the 13th century is teleported into the trenches of World War I during a deadly assault. Upon seeing the horrors of modern war, the nun decides to bring the gift of forgiveness and kindness to the soldiers at the front. To achieve her goal, she has to use her special ability of slowing the time down within a small area; Platforming over the bullets frozen in time, she has to reach every soldier and pray with them to stop the killing on the western front and ultimately end one of the bloodiest wars in human history.
The soundtrack would be mainly hardcore japanese techno, though within the time freeze bubbles you would hear remixes of Mozarts Für Elise.

I'm not good at these
But you guys are, and it's a shame to see this thread die.

Besides the fact that both Beethoven as well as Mozart are now spinning in their graves, this sounds pretty fun actually :DD