How do these game elements hold up?

I've been going over some stuff in my head about things I may want to try in a new project, and I just want to see if any of them have been tried and if they succeeded/failed. Oh, and I don't claim any sort of ownership for what I bring up. If you think it's a good, feel free to use it.

First up, plot elements:
- A story where the main hero doesn't have much to do with the full scale of things/doesn't involve the huge bad guy behind everything.
 For example, say the main quest you go on deals with stopping a vital city from collapsing after an enemy attack. And the game doesn't ending with you flying in your cliché airship to General Badguy's apartment in Volcanoland to deliver the seven sacred crystals you spent all game finding that will magically make his powers useless enough for you to take him down.

-A lot of characters that knew each other long before the story begins.
Most quality games I've played have the hero and maybe 1 friend leaving for some awesome mission with most characters picked up along the way, so does it make for a weak game having 6 or 7 friends/acquaintances that already have relationships with each other? I feel like you can get some serious (believable) rivalry issues and backstory action doing that.

-Starting out small (And I mean really small)
I'm sure most people want to jump right into the action with the slew of Rpgmaker games readily available, but how about some backstory building, maybe involving the hero as a kid (Whose life you run around as for a while)? I know the opening (AKA the most important of these games) would be slow, but if done right, it can get the guy playing pretty attached to some of the characters.

-Starting out big
How does starting off as the MVP of your game (Prince, King, General, etc.) work? I haven't seen any games where it's just an uncorrupted dude high up stopping an alien invasion or something, and maybe there's a reason for that.

Next up: Mapping stuff
-A Star Ocean 3-like World Map
Most traditional SNES RPGs use the good ol' turn-you-into-a-giant world map, and I feel that some players wouldn't want to find themselves walking through Generic Name Plains 50 times to advance the plot, but I really fell in love with the way Star Ocean had you run through wild-ish areas to go from town to town. It also makes the hero seem less significant, which I'm planning on doing something of that sort. I really don't want to play off of the whole peasant farmer boy saves the world because he found a ring that gives him unbelievable power thing.

-Towns with only important buildings
I know I enjoy exploring towns for their gratuitous amounts of loot as much as the next guy, but sometimes it takes away from that necessary mapping time some of us need and it gets players distracted from the story. I had Tales of Vesperia in mind with this one, I think every city had a Weapon/Armor shop, Item shop, Inn, and Important building, and that was it. No breaking into random strangers' houses Zelda style to take a Healing Herb some guy left in his underwear drawer.

-Changing seasons
The FSM (First Seed Material) maps have some wicked awesome multiseasonal chipsets, but is it worth the effort to make your hometown snowy every once in a while? I dunno what kind of eventing I would have to do to get that to work well, either (I use 2k3).

Other stuff that didn't fit into those categories:
-RTP usage
I've heard that as long as you've got a good story & don't rely on given RTP names (Don't look now! It's ARSHES!!!) much, it'll do fine. So how important is personalizing your game (especially if you're making battlers)? I know people love a well done CMS and some fresh sprites, but those are freakin' hard to make. Eh, I guess I sorta answered this one myself, but other feedback's always nice.

-Extensive cutscenes
How easily do people get bored with a huge cutscene about everything your army's going to do to prepare for the Siege on Huge Castle Town? Special effects (especially in 2k3) only go as far as maybe some cool pictures and a few battle animations, so what special things do people do to spice up their mini-movies?

That's all I can think of right now, but I'll add more if I think of them. By the way, thanks for reading my spaced out wall o' text if you did I gave it as much character as I could.

The first two things that you cited don't really make much of a difference to me. The main can be a huge part, or a small part. He can have a million friends, or no friends. The only important thing is that either of these make sense in the context of the game. I can't really see either of them having a detrimental effect on the enjoyment of any game.

The starting out big/small argument is key to me, though I would say that the only really important aspect of this is pacing. You can start out huge, but not overwhelming. Conversely, you can start out small, but don't bombard the player with walls of text scroll. There's nothing that makes me turn off a game faster than having to read a novel before I can start playing.

Overworld maps are great, if done correctly. Examples of bad overworld maps are any of the Final Fantasy games, but even in those, they were necessary for grinding. Some of my favorite overworld maps were the ones that had their own style to them. Chrono Trigger basically did the opposite, and ditched town maps. Star Ocean's maps were great, and they also reminded me a lot of PC maps, such as Baldur's Gate. The whole "uncover the map" metagame is a great addition, but if overused would get really old.

The whole "important building" mechanic comes mostly from a lack of memory to hold resources. If developers had larger space to hold the actual game, I'm sure there would be many more nooks and crannies to explore. This is actually one of my favorite parts of gaming. Here's an example: In STALKER, there's an incredibly detailed warehouse, and looking at it, you'd expect something to go down there. When you get to it, there's absolutely nothing. It's just a building. The fact that the building is there, though, lends itself more to the atmosphere of the game.

Extensive cutscenes are boring. If I wanted to watch a movie, I would do so. An example that I always use is Xenosaga. This could've been one of the greatest games ever made, but I would never know. After watching 2 hours of cutscenes and only controlling a character for around 20 minutes, I promptly took the game to the store and traded it in. In my opinion, anything that takes the player out of the game doesn't need to be there. Take Half-Life 2: The entire game is seen from the 1st person view. A story is told through the actual gameplay, rather than through some heavy-handed scenes that pull the player out of the experience.

All in all, I'd say that none of these things are black and white, and most of them can be beneficial to a game if they're executed correctly. Who would ever have thought that a game based on Ayn Rand's zany objectivism set in a destitute underwater utopia would be any good? (BioShock) How about a 2D sidescroller where your movements to the left and right control time? (Braid) Presentation comes in second to execution, and most ideas can be successful if they are creative and fun.

Starting out small reminds me of Ocarina of Time when you start off as Young Link. For most of these the success/failure outcome really depends on the execution of them. I'd say most of these have been tried in some form in games (such as the Star Ocean 'world map'), so it really depends on how you use these features/aspects in a way that's effective for the game you're making.

-A story where the main hero doesn't have much to do with the full scale of things/doesn't involve the huge bad guy behind everything.
By this time, I don't remember any game so. It's really probably that some game like that already exists, however.

-Starting out small (And I mean really small)
Have you played Fallout? You start as a baby and then grow up. Be careful with this, if you make so, because it can be sometimes boring. Don't make the main feature of the game to be small, people may get bored quickly.

-Starting out big
Not many games starts with a important protagonist, and most games which do so invent some type of excuse for making the hero loose her range, powers, memory, etc. Have you played God of War? When you start you are kinda the most powerful human.

-Towns with only important buildings
People like details. If you can add extra things better, and if the extra things can be evaded, so the player can only play the main story if he wants so, even better.

-RTP usage
Most people hate RTP, but it is a really good choice. Nowhere else will you find lot of characters, battlers, animations, icons, and else which have the same style. Sometimes games use resources from everywhere and end up having 10 different styles. That's not really good.

-Extensive cutscenes
If well made, they are fun. However, sometimes like FFX where 50% of the main game are presentations, they can be really annoying. Specialy annoying when you can't bypass them. It is highly recommendable to add a Skip Cutscene feature.

I teach kids how to write stories, and I always tell them to identify a problem that the characters in the story will face. They always say stuff like, "They are late for school" or "Their dog died." But then I question them, what if the person WANTED to be late for school, or what if they hated their pet dog, then it might not be a problem for THEM.

So I suppose it doesn't matter if the game starts out small or not. The world needs saving, or if the character simply has to deliver a letter to his girl. As long as when the player plays the game, they have some attachment to the characters and want to see them solve their problem. You can start off small, but as long as this offers enough scope to provide the player with a variety throughout the length of the game.

I think it is better not to start at the beginning of the story, because there is a greater sense of mystery when more is implied than is explicitly told. If you have characters alluding to past events it makes it more believable. As long as those events fit what you know of the characters.

1. Hero must be complex and confident
2. Final boss development
3. Cast with interesting backgrounds and character development
4. Give the sensation of real conversation in dialogue
5. Stay away from generic fantasy worlds
6. be unique
7. cutscenes should be something to look forward to
8. love, loss, family, and sacrifice. make the story compelling
9. avoid 'comic relief' char but do include humor

You mentioned quite a few of the things I just stated...Whatever you do avoid doing anything in the story that you've already heard about or seen...

Don't necropost. There's a 3 month warning for a reason.

- A story where the main hero doesn't have much to do with the full scale of things/doesn't involve the huge bad guy behind everything.[/i]

... nooo.  The protagonist should be a protagonist.

-A lot of characters that knew each other long before the story begins.

Yep, I like it.  They can make references in conversation to the last time they saved the world, etc..  You can meet villains for the first time all over again.  etc.

-Starting out small (And I mean really small)

No.  I think if we're talking amateur RPG, then you REALLY need to hook the player.  People like to download community RPG's, play them for 5 minutes, say "Christ this game is boring," and never play it again.

-Starting out big

I dunno.  To quote a cinema textbook, "The inspiring tale of a social nobody who, through hard work and perseverance, and against all odds, manages to pull himself up by his bootstraps and achieve extraordinary success."  If you were going to start-out as the likes of a King, I'd do it Greek tragedy style, and immediately 'cause the King to be dethroned, discredited, and in a quest to restore his good name.  Or if it's a prince, it'd be like "someone's trying to usurp your royal family," Shakespeare style.

-A Star Ocean 3-like World Map

Yes.  There's a few ways that I've sought to discard the classical world map, this is one of them, and I like it.

-Towns with only important buildings

Sort of a 50/50 issue.  Generally it's unfun to have too many pointless buildings to explore, and on the other hand a lot of RPG-players are the type who like to question "Why is this game so unrealistic?  Where's the farmers, the residential buildings, etc.?"

-Changing seasons

I don't think it's really worth the effort, but it would be a good move if the game was meant to have true depth, and you were going for a masterpiece.  It's more feasible if you could keep the game restricted to a single region, instead of being world-wide, similar to Chrono Trigger.

-RTP usage

RTP usage is the devil.  The only sensible reason to use it would be "I'm going to use all RTP, DBS, DMS, etc. and concentrate all of my focus on an extremely brilliant plot."  Especially if it was the programmers first game, version 1 could be all plot, and version 2 they could go back and try to create custom systems and use custom graphics.

-Extensive cutscenes

I think cutscenes are great, and I think it's good when they're about 3 minutes long, i.e. long enough to hear a good portion of the game's brilliant soundtrack (my game's soundtrack is brilliant, don't know about yours).  As a player, I like to hit "enter enter enter" to get the cutscene over with and get back to the game play, so these cutscenes of yours, if exceptionally lengthy, need to have gameplay (and perhaps even puzzles, minigames, battles, etc.) spliced into them.