So far Pantheon has done a fine job of portraying a conscious world but i find that an action bar is a poor representation of the subconscious mind, and what makes the world real is a conscious and subconscious reality working in unison. I've combined some of brads earlier more subconscious work with his new conscious stuff and i think it kind of fits together in a Microsoft paint sort of way.And shouldn't the subconscious of an evil Necromancer be different from a Paladins? I in-vision a necromancer to have death, decay, and suspicious of others perceived evil intent, a necromancer should have a very troubled inner voice. and a paladin should have a very opposite Minds eye. We are in constant conversation with ourselves, i think if you took Dexter monologue and where constantly displaying it in a necromancers subconscious text box, along with some images of death in the subconscious visual display it would make the experience much darker. Maybe there could be like an ego meter in the subconscious of a necromancer So when you are losing faction you gain ego and it gives you a mana regen boost or something lol. It would be cool if as you progressed through the game it unlocks different parts of your subconscious, kind of like unlocking new cards in a card game and you could use the subconscious mindsets as a kind of character boost.
Let's see if I have the gist of what you are getting at:
1) The action bar is a representation of "what you do" - i.e. what you are calling the conscious level of game play... Your character's actual interactions with the virtual world.
2) You are thinking that it would also be interesting to play how your character thinks and feels - and this would be the subconscious level of play... and these things would have some tie to the conscious level.
So using your example - when faction goes down an ego goes up... that mana regen would manifest itself in an ability to cast (conscious "what you do") for longer durations without interruption...
With different subconscious events / parameters impacting you in varied ways (by class)
Do I have that right?
If so, is added immersion into your character the goal you are trying to attain?
It sort of sounds like an instantiation of role playing to me - with actual impacts on game play... so playing a warrior as dark and brooding might play out differently than playing a warrior as a gallant hero in terms of how the character played.
I can see how that would be entertaining - but I shudder to think of what it would take to code different permutations of that... because maybe I want to play my warrior as psychotic killer or whatever :)
I think if you took some already existing game elements and UI and tweaked them to better serve as a subconscious, it wouldn't really be that much work. Memory is a giant part of the subconscious, it would be cool if i could look at screenshots while in game. The great memories is what brings me back to play everquest time and time again.