WHICH OF THESE ARE A MUST HAVE IN RPG GAMES?

Same thing I think is a must-have in any other game -- requiring something resembling thought and/or dexterity to get past the game's challenges, and variety in said challenges. There's nothing worse for me than to stare at the screen slack-jawed when playing a videogame.

I don't really care about duration. Most long games that I've played achieve their length with mind-numbing tedium. Also, I seriously think that a lot of people over-value "hours of gameplay" to an absurd and detrimental degree.

Aesthetics is what usually gets my initial interest, though. Enjoying the game's look and sound helps a lot when playing, and there's been times where even if I don't think a game is badly designed, I don't find myself wanting to play it if the aesthetics are really bland or downright terrible.

Likewise, a plot that is at least charming is important to me with an RPG, adventure game, or any game with exploration and considerable length, really.

I agree about Duration being an element that's not really needed. I used to think all RPGs needed to be 40+ adventures, but actually, you can do just fine in ten hours or less with a lot less padding. Hell, even in just an hour you can put in a lot of gameplay!

Personally, I would argue that dungeon design is the most important, as that's the real meat of game, although other elements can potentially compensate if they're good enough. One of the things I've learned from playing the games on here is that duration is overrated. Don't worry about the game's length, make it just as long as it needs to be.

I think that the most important elements in an RPG game are story and characters, there may be exceptions though,
but at least for me, these elements are what make a good RPG game.

An RPG is created because there is a story to tell. Without the story the game shouldn't exist. Thus the story is the main detail. A great story can surpass graphics and gameplay. While gameplay is important, in an RPG it's no the most important thing. And graphics? While pretty, they don't necessarily need to be super awesome. I mean, they can definitely help sell the story and setting, but they don't need to be super ultra HD - something Square needs to remember.

I've immensely enjoyed RPGs with some shitty ass stories, so I don't know how integral it really is, objectively.

Having been a Dungeon Master for my friends for well over ten years, I personally think that a strong story isn't entirely necessary. As long as the role playing is fun (and the fun factor really depends on the level of immersion as written in my previous post), the story doesn't necessarily have to be completely planned out, scripted to perfection or be all encompassing for the journey to be enjoyable.

I remember planning out a sizable quest for my friends where they had to journey to some dungeon from a nearby town. Rather than depart for the dungeon right after supplying, they decided to pool their money, buy up an empty building and open up their own item store and undercut the local vendors because they were miffed at how they were "exploiting" the local adventuring populace with inflated merchandise. Three hours of what would have been hacking kobolds to death turned into a retail merchandising war between the players and the local merchant coalition. Eventually, the party saw some action when I had one of the hotshot town merchants send a hit squad to trash the player's store during open hours. By the end of the night, half the town was in flames.

Case in point, the story was not well crafted and was primarily of the player's own design but they had a blast. Regardless of how things turned out, everything that happened was a direct/indirect result of everyone's role playing. Can this kind of table top role playing style carry over to video game rpgs? I think it can... or at least make progress in that direction.

In my opinion, the more organic and nebulous an rpg is, the more enjoyable it will be.

Yeah, what you say about "pulling the player in" is exactly why I listed an "Organic World/Setting". The world needs to be able to make the player react as opposed to the entire world reacting to the player (which is found in almost every single video game rpg). Immersion allows players to build an investment. The further invested a player is, the more inclined they'll be to continue playing.

I like your comparison, heh.

I actually think that video game RPGs need to derive as much as they can from table tops in order to continue evolving and remain innovative. In my opinion, commercial rpgs have been stagnating since the early 2000s and developers have finally started realizing in the last 5 or so years the importance of player freedom as opposed to hardline railroading. Perhaps this is why action RPGs like Dragon Age, Skyrim and Mass Effect have won such acclaim and why FF13 was so criticized. This also explains the resurgence in popularity with old style rogue-like rpgs/games as of late.