EDIT:  I have already started working on my new project and this topic is kinda obsolete now, but I will leave it for posterity sake. 

Hello everyone!

So... After over 3 years of professional work in gamedev, I'm finally ready to start a new side project and I would like you to help me decide what it should be. I have two ideas for games that I was thinking about for quite a while, and I still can't decide which one would be better.  Keep in mind, that both ideas require building a BIG and complex game, with their own challenges,  and to be perfectly honest, I doubt that I will be able to actually finish any of those projects. That being said, games like those should be a great learning experience, and as long as things won't go terribly off the rail, then YOU people should end up with at leas a decent prototype/demo/1-level-game. 

Those ideas are:

1. PostApo System Sim (think Dishonored/Deus Ex/Prey meets Fallout/Metro) - It would be 1st or 3rd person action game where you are tasked with scouting dangerous wasteland in search for resources for your home city. The game would have light crafting and survival elements, but more in style of Metro games than currently over-popular crafting survivals (this means no hunger/thirst meters). Going guns blazing at enemies would not be advised. Instead you would have to sneak, manipulate environment (moving objects, activating machines/traps), manipulate AI (lure, turn on each other, bluff) , craft traps and items, or hack enemy systems to weaken or split enemies into smaller groups, and then take them down or go around them (additional gameplay reference: Metal Gear Solid V, The Last of Us). One of the self imposed challenges of this project would be implementation of G.O.A.P. for enemy AI (see F.E.A.R.).

2. Isometric Action RPG (think Baldur's Gate/Dark Souls meets MOBA (LOL or DOTA) style of combat) - So the whole idea behind this project is that I LOVE DnD style character building and just how many different builds you can get by mixing classes and traits. But what old DnD games always lacked for me, was (more) skill based combat. Plus, I prefer to focus on controlling only my character instead of a whole team. I would also try to go for a little more open-world-like maps (see Neverwinter Nights 2: Sorm of Zehir), with some random encounters to try and simulate the experience that playing poor old Lineage II used to give when played competitively. Add to that Divinity: Original Sin's system-sim'ish design to spells, quests and puzzles, and I think the game could be super fun to play.

I started by wanting to make idea 1, but then decided it was too hard to make and will require actually decent graphics to be enjoyable, so then thought of idea 2 (which could work even with placeholder graphics), but after a while started having deeper feelings about idea 1 again, and well, here we are ^^

So yeah, tell me which one sounds more interesting to you.

*stock image provided by random google search*