[Rami Sihvo]

I think more ordinary side quests would be nice. Not that every village that party enter has some evil wizard that must be destroyed
or there is loads of treasures in bottom of dungeon. I mean that
every character class has it own abilities and job besides adventuring. Also there could be some empty dungeons around beacuse PC:s are not probably only adventurers in whole world. Also Wheels
of time-style dungeon could be nice where only treasure in dangerous
dungeon would be other adventurers equpment. Dungeons should also
change in time and new monsters and stuff should appear.

About those ordinary quests. For example visiting in some remote village partys cleric will be asked to keep some kind of ritual, bless the crops, funeral, wedding or whatever. Fighter can teach peasants to fight (like in feodal Japan. Peasants were not allowed to practice fighting and Ronins teach them. "Who teach you to fight?" "Well..oh... it was kenku-demon that showed up!") and act as a blacksmith. Thief can do manual labour and teach useful tricks to villagers besides stealing. Ranger can hunt and tan skins. Wizard can teach people to read and exhange knowledge. Supid characters can get manual labour and intelligent
characters can have more complicated tasks. Charisma and aligment should be notified. Not everybody will give work to someone who doesn´t look honest.

In scifi-games jobs could be found in computer bulletin-board and
be more formal with predetermined goals. Just arrived characters would be asked to unlawful operations, beacuse they have no connections with local criminals. This is just as useful as in fantasy games too. Background and repuation should be more important,
beacuse information is easier to get.

I think space battles are important in scifi games. Just think about
star wars without space battles! Still space battle is quite hard to
program but with few options such as run away or turn to fight could
have major affect to game plot.