I suppose that this is more of an action game, but since online is one of the categories I suppose that it'd be more relevant that way.

The basic idea is simple: it is online RPG simplified. >From my experience with online RPGs, the only thing that's fun up there is to kill monsters and/or each other, so let's remove the useless stuff like cooking and fishing skills, earning money, handling a virtual economy, and stuff like that. It's a pain for developers to manage and players don't really care...

Back to the idea. The setting can be any one of the following: An urban city infested with crimes and gangs, a fantasy world filled with evil monsters, or other ideas to your own liking.

Each of the players would personally create and control a single character, and the process of creation would include choosing a face, clothing, and most important of all, a combat style/weapon.

A typical player would first arrive at the outer circle/level of the world, and has to fight his/her way to the top.

Players can engage in the typical chat/emot when they encounter each other, or they can choose to do one thing... fight each other!

Fighting is resolved as a "fighting game" style combat, that means a typical 3 rounds with a life bar sort of combat. The winner would earn experience points depending on how he/she performed during combat. These points can be worked toward learning new moves, extending to a new style/weapon, or increasing basic attributes (attack, defend, health, etc.). The loser would also earn a little experience points, but he/she would be restricted from fighting (rest period) for a certain amount of time.

Each circe/level is held by a human boss player. A player cannot advance to explore the next level without defeating the boss. If the boss is defeated, however, the player can choose to advance to the next circle or become the boss of the circle he/she is in. The boss will be demoted by one level and is banned from challenging bosses for a set period of time.

The boss has benefits of his own: he has the power to control the bot (computer "training dummy" players) population in the current level. If he can keep his place for a certain period of time, he can create his own special move and teach it/use it on other players. The special move stays even if the boss loses the title.

The second method to overthrow boss is by a petition, which is more like a mob fest. A group of players can sign a contract agreement and if every player show up on time, the boss will be forced to take on the whole mob with restricted health restoration. Once that the boss is down, the remaining mobster would have the choice to slip into the next circle or stay and challenge each other to become the boss. After the bloodfest, the last man standing would become the new boss. The catch of a mob fest is this: if ANY of the petitioners decide to back out, the rest of the gang would be forced to face the boss one by one, where the boss can restore to full health after dealing with each challenger. And that means LOTS OF DEAD BODIES on the floor.

I suppose that besides the minimal social life involved, the game should be concentrated on the combat part, offering player different combat styles, weapons, even sub-division from each style where they can learn different special moves and develop their characters to their own liking. The "create special moves" feature of the boss is especially useful in expanding the world and creating powerful boss players. For each new level player should be rewarded with respect and praise from bot characters to make sure that they feel "it's all worth it".

I think that's all I have in my mind.