Fallout 4

I love the sandbox Idea and maybe starting out in vaults all over a huge area. World has to be massive. Game starts with a wasteland with several large city and surrounding areas, say a century after the bombs drop. Mostly nothing in way of survivors outside of the vault people and of course the nasty shit that awaits you in the wasteland. Game would be open PvP with player made factions which comprise of guilds and alliances. World would be large enough that some areas would need to be procedurally generated with human touch coming in after to make it right. There would be vehicles to get around.

There would need to be a player limit to size of guilds and alliances to prevent the single massive nation everyone joins because they are faggot bandwagoners.Large enough to be big but not so big that everyone can join one or even 1/3 of the server could join including alliances. Goal should be to have 3 or 4 big boys per server with many smaller factions. Everyone is PvP enabled except your nation and its alliances. Full loot. Very limited inventory space so reality will be you can't just auto take everything when you win.

These alliances would form, grow townships with tangible benefits. Storage for goods, water and food would be necessary (think EQ not wasteland) you can set up shops and crafting stations which again would be necessary to build weapons, ammo and the such because there would be practically no civilization besides what you create. You would also have to find a defensible position because your base / buildings can be sieged or destroyed like in Shadowbane. Player communities would be as real lifelike as possible with as many defensive options as you can imagine. Moats, choke points, sniper towers, elevation etc. Everything should be destructible.

You can earn research via exploration and drops in game. Computer terminals in highly sought after areas, safes in the world with plans or rare guns. Named baddies carrying around weapons. There should be a plethora of this shit for people to fight over. You see something with a NPC name on it you should be hauling balls to kill it regardless of what is going on. Stuff should also be fairly random and respawn eventually, even in safes and computer terminals making old areas worthy of going back through often. Breaking down rare drops allows you to be able to create components from it and eventually make the entire item. Weapons decay and need repair. Everything would need to be crafted by a crafter. Only components would drop in the world and the raw materials. The shit weapons that had been sitting around for a century might work but they wouldn't be ideal for anyone. The good weapons will eventually break but can be repaired. So they'll have to be sacrificed or eventually you won't be able to use it if it can't be repaired.

There should be areas in each city section that are designated salvage areas. You can find salvage everywhere but those areas would be focus points for large groups to fight over and salvage.

As the game develops trade routes would be an excellent way to move supplies for money. These would be in game routes to major points in the world. Players would be heavily encouraged to participate with these routes and heavily defend them for the caps and rewards that would come. Think Archage, much more valuable but players defend a convoy they can set someone up to control and drive. Everyone has full access to their abilities and can move at full speed. More more like an armored convoy than a pack run. Enemies and other players would be able to kill you and take your convoy for their own gain.

The only safe zones in the game would be your starting vault and the small surrounding area. There would also be some trading hubs that would be safe with each hub accepting supply runs from PC factions for rewards. No pussy shit, if you attack in a safe zone you're gibbed by NPCs. If you heal anyone under or attacked recently, you get gibbed. These areas would be setup in a similar fashion to Eve stations, obviously far fewer of them than eve but still plentiful in game. People could go and trade here via vendors but the areas would not be connected although you could see what each area had via computer. Players would have to travel and visit to collect their items. Players can hire other players to run their items to them just like Eve or transport materials. Players can also hire players or guilds to bounty other players or guilds. With set number of kills or item collection and reward when received.