Defend' as it exists in most RPGs is a very shallow tactic, though. Essentially it boils down to 'sacrifice the possibility of dealing damage to take less damage'. If Defend had it's own set of choices, as Luke points out, it would be much more interesting. As has been pointed ...
In the current day and age, the best thing a developer can do is allow the player to dictate what doses of story and combat/gameplay they want. A game that does this really, really well is The World Ends With You. If you haven't played it you should , every ...
The CA's role in the game was only to give out coins, one per attendee to the talk. If the job could have been automated, it would have been, but it can't, so it wasn't. They were as much 'in the game' as a GM is in a modern MMO, ...
Eliminating random battles is a design choice, like any other. If your random battles have a purpose, they serve that purpose. A lot of people bash random encounters because they're a waste of time, or a mindless grind, but that is only the function of the challenges those random battles ...
Agreed, it would be interesting to see a medium sized studio established with this process as their work philosophy. It sounds similar to what Double Fine are doing with their amnesia fortnight games.
