that sounds like an interesting idea, the idea about where you collect survivors and if you die its up to the next person to continue the legacy. It would be interesting if you had different characters and they had different attributes, id imagine some would be expendable, but maybe you get a perfect game if nobody in your party dies.
even before i was a minecraft fan, and when Microsoft first started talking about supporting indy developers on the first xbox i had several ideas about destructible environments, and crafting. I believe Dead Island has done this sort of thing to some extant, but when I used to play those old static resident evil games i always thought about those damn unusable objects and how i could solve problems in different ways if only i could manipulate the environment. I really love game-play like this. I can think of one instance of Portal where i skipped a whole level because i stacked a bunch of junk up and went straight to the exit.
on one hand i like the idea that theres a world that has a story that you learn about, on the other hand i like to really manipulate and interact with that story in my own creative way. If someone can create a game like this then that would be really awesome.
also, i like randomized environments. Thats something both animal crossing and minecraft had. If you could make a game where it generates neighboorhoods, and then generates whats inside the houses, then that would be cool. I can imagine this sprawling city that one would have to conquer in a survival horror game, but its different for each person. How awesome would that be?