[another god]

I've written like 10 different things here. I'm really just going to separate this into two different parts, and then say that this game is Demon's Colossus: Simon's Quest of Blue Skies Soulsrim. It's what I want from Dragon's Dogma, but know I'm not going to get.

MECHANICALLY:
I want it a lot like Dark Souls, but I also want it expanded. Make the "verbs" more uniform with L1/L2/R1/R2 being the same standard move/power move for all weapons. Let the clicks take the function of "special move" like parry or grab. Make sure that two handed weapons get block and parry (maybe even shove?), and dual wielders can attack with both weapons at once. Give bows a shove or light stunning attack, and also let them work more like shooting games (L1 reticule). Make them slow enough to balance, and be careful with how useful autoaim gets. Does anyone use bows in multi? Balance the lock-on targeting with bows and arrows somehow...

The online mechanics wouldn't be nearly as harsh as DSouls games. I'd want the player to feel like a Dragon Quest 3 party member. Maybe there'd be taverns where players could get together, and you could join, but you could also invade other people's games and be a looter. I like the idea of arenas.

EVERYTHING ELSE:
BLUE FUCKING SKIES, GUYS! Massive world, easily traveled, and exploration being a huge thing. Don't make the player fight monsters every twenty feet to engage him. Every monster on the overworld is going to be purposeful. Make the environment full of lots of things to gather. Maybe even have a bunch of weapons-as-tools like Axes and Butterfly Nets, add a bunch of crafting. Let the player eventually get mounts or build transport (or maybe magically summon transport?). And as far as transportation goes, don't let there be one best way to move around. There should be a ton of stuff for the player to do outside of fighting so that when the player does fight, it's awesome. Also, yeah, arenas are a must to help train the player. Maybe once the player is good enough he can capture monsters so him and his friends can fight monsters (instead of just each other) in the arenas.

Oh yeah, Day/Night cycle so the game is still dark at points and you can fight really hard badguys. Maybe bring back soul tendency. Have dungeons open up when you do weird things (e.g. have black soul tendency in the middle of the night). And have more dungeons than necessary. Let there be a lot of content that's not necessary for the story.

[another god]

3D Dot Game Heroes?

Also, yeah bro-op would be really good with the DSouls gameplay. Not a good DSouls game, but definitely would be super fun.
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interdimensional

[another god]

I don't know much about Dark Souls' multiplayer, but I remember thinking that the best aspect of Demon Souls' multiplayer was the uneven balance for PvP. The adventurer gets an advantage to health and gear, but he has to deal with enemies and traps littered throughout a maze. The invader is an initial health and gear disadvantage, but he can use the enemies and traps to his advantage.

And while this points out how terribly unbalanced the game is, it's fucking genius. The game sorts out the players by their rate of progression, and then pits the faster more reckless players against the slower more careful players. The outliers kind of get into the mix, sort of. Maybe. But the entire point of a dungeon crawl is to balance out slow, tedious play vs. fast place to get-the-fucking-game-done. And that's literally what the MP does.

I'd say there should be a way to encourage evenly matched duels, but that would be totally different design goal. It would be awesome, but only as a way to celebrate how awesome the game feels just to play.
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interdimensional