Something I have noticed with ARPGs is that no matter how many skills the game has the players want to form their builds around one button. PoE players are maybe the worst about this, but it was a thing all the way back in D2.
Has any ARPG really leaned into this element? Like a game where each class only has one attack but you get to add layer after layer to the one attack.
Immersive sims have basically 3 inspirations. Theif, system shock 2, and deus ex. Most of the newer immersive sims are taking after thief and system shock, but I want to see a take after Deus Ex.
Dose any one know any? I kind of get why so many games take after system shock as it's easier to make a giant interconnected dungeon at modern standard, but I really miss things like city hubs skills and other RPG mechanics.
This is partially inspired by pragmata, but the core idea is that stelth is really weak in horizon. Its understandable why. The machines in horizon are big, they have a lot of moving parts for the player to interact with in combat, but with stealth its mostly the stelth attack that just deals body damage.
Hacking opens up a lot of doors. You could hack a thunderjaw and detach its disk launcher, or retract the armor on the core, or eject their canisters, turn of their cooling to set them or fire, overcharge their cooling to freeze them. It gives you a lot.
You would want to balance things out with challenges. Hacking should take time and be interrupted by damage. You can have recon machines start a search at the start of a hack, You can also give machines the ability to back hack or disrupt your hacking. Pragmata has ideas for this, they do hacking on a grid and different machine have differently shaped grids with hazards that cross the line between the hacking grin and the world.