What defines a good RPG?
I'm asking you as gamers rather than developers. What defines a good RPG game to you? What do you look for when looking for an RPG to play? MMORPGs not included. Do you prefer a captivating story? Deep characters? An amazing sound track? Or do you look for stunning visuals? The reason I ask is because I feel as though the gaming industry has become so obsessed with visuals that a great story has become a thing of the past.
Take Square-Enix for example, their most popular franchise (and for good reason) Final Fantasy is famous for it's beautiful way of telling a story with intricate dialog and elegant sound tracks, atleast that's the way it used to be. As of late they've been so focused on graphics, making their games look as beautiful as possible that they've forgotten what their fans fell in love with all along. Story, Gameplay, Music.
Now I'm asking you as developers. Do you think times have changed and top of the line visuals are now the fuel that powers the industry? Or do you think the industry has gotten carried away?
You only have to look as far as minecraft and runescape to see that there are games out there which fly in the face of generally accepted ways of creating a successful game.
These days game companies are profit driven organisations. They are not there to make good rpgs, they are there to make money, with their original purpose and mission statement buried 6 feet under. Blizzard is the latest company to become "one of them". Basically good graphics sells, you don't need to make a good game, when you can use less resources to make 5 games with good graphics and earn more.
Its gotta have a convincing Story. Story can make up for poor Graphics, But great Graphics really don't make up for a story. As Bake Said, Shinny toys will drive sales, but not replay value.
In needs a captivating story. Also, story telling is key. The music shouldn't be irritating and sounds should be varied. (seriously, add in another sound for that swinging sword, it gets old so friggen fast) Sound isn't huge though (sometimes I just turn it off altogether). It really is nice to have good music/varied sounds.
Graphics should be decent, I'm not going to take stick men seriously. The combat system needs to be decent, I also want a decent explanation of the system if it's an rpg. (they usually take a while to beat)
Also, some uniqueness is cool too. Like procedurally generated stuff or some new takes on game mechanics. (shiny stuff, not necessarily superficial, but nonetheless SHINY) I downloaded an arcade shooter that was completely procedurally generated (pretty much everything). It got me playing the game, and it's not half bad. I think it was called Corruption fyi.
One thing I don't want to see is an item upgrade system. (if this is offline) Why should there be one? If there is one, it better not be like one's in MMORPGs where you spend loads of time in it. Just something to put out there.
Well I wouldn't follow the final fantasy route, since they're soo overly played and remade and new versions of the same shit. I personally think it's stupid, its always the end of the world or some dumb crap with final fantasy.
But anyways to answer your question, you don't have to have a storyline that's totally different from anything else, a good place to start would be to go to a library or a book store, look at the different sections of book genres, read the back summaries on them and find something you think would make a good game, then change up whatcha got so you're not violating any laws 
Also I'd take away or add some of your own stuff and definitely change names and the characters around also don't follow the whole book storyline cause then someone will eventually be like WTF??
But a good RPG is one that brings the player into the game, not the player just controlling someone in the game. Get the players attention, like how when people watch a TV series and they really get into it, it should be that way in an rpg. Have your twists and turns, your comical relief, your good and bad moments. Just like how they teach people to write stories basically.
Also you don't have to have all the typical systems, like leveling, or monsters, or blah blah depending on your game will decide what systems you should use to make the game more fun and bring the player into the game more.
I think immersion is a big part of the story line. If I don't feel like I'm part of the game, then I'm less inclined to worry about the story (maybe the language is off or some things just don't fit). Sometimes I only finish a game to know what happens at the end, it can be a big motivation.
Motivation to start playing a game usually come from: some kind of hype, decent graphics, decent trailer that shows game play and some cinematics would be nice, usually something unique attracts me too (I'm a big programming geek, anything cool for me doesn't necessarily attract gamers)
That's what does it for me. Also, the d20 system gets boring...
I'm surprised, this was more feedback than I had expected. In reply, I think you are all right in some ways . . though I do not quite agree with soggy's comment on the final fantasy series 
On a serious note, I hope to run a game studio one day and my goal would be to bring the player's attention away from the graphics and back to the finer aspects of a video game. I believe what makes a video game art, is not the video game's art, but the experience you get while playing a video game, that is not much different from watching a movie, or reading a book, or even looking at paintings.
I kinda agree with Soggy on Final Fantasy. There were some exceptions, but you are pretty much always in the role of some loser who becomes uber-strong in a relatively short period of time for no apparent reason then save the world just in time.
I am quite sick of the "epic hero" story myself. Its just such a lazy way to do things. Is a game really not worth playing unless you can become the strongest in the world?
You know in japan there's this game where you save the world by writing letters in a certain time and with a limit on the number of typos you can make, sadly I never see anyone playing that game
Typing of the dead?
Thats a really addictive game. I played it on PC at my friends house, but apparently they also have arcades with a qwerty keyboard.
Yes they do have the keyboards in front of them, I can take a picture when I head back to japan Thursday and probably upload it this weekend. It's at the Sega Arcade near American village in Okinawa, Japan. They've got some really fun games there but most of them are the same thing and get boring real fast. If you're good at the DDR type games there, you're just as badass as a rockstar almost.. I hate those games >_<
Well in korea, if you are good at games, you ARE a rockstar.
I went to the SEGA Arcade in Akihabara, but not a lot interested me. If I were to go back against the only games I would play are BBCS and SSF4. I even got bored of Pachinko, but I guess the losing heaps of money part doesn't really appeal to me.
Oh man you do not bother a Japanese person playing pachinko, you're likely to either get ninja'd somehow or get the nastiest evil glares I almost went to Korea but they decided to not send as many people so I stayed behind.
Something original. Most of the time, I play games to try something new, not do stuff I have done before. TF2 and CoD are an exception, but those aren't RPGs.