So I'm designing a FPMMORP Survival Sandbox with a wide range of gameplay elements from the basics such as combat and crafting all the way to citybuilding and politics.

The core game mechanic revolves around the relationship between the player's Hinj, a spirit-like entity that exists in a parallel dimension with the power to affect the "real" one, and the Commoners and Heros. (Most of these terms are still placeholders, but give me your opinion on them/ideas for new ones)

Basically, each player is playing the game as a Hinj which has the ability to influence Commoners and possess Heros.

As a Hinj the player floats around with absolute freedom and the gameplay resembles that of a sort of RTS. In the beginning players have no bonds to any Hero's and therefore the first step is to create one by influencing a pair of Commoners to "descend" (my more polite word for breeding, as in to create descendants), or by finding an already pregnant woman. The player then uses an ability with a 24 hour real time cooldown called "Bond" that imparts a piece of the Hinj's essence onto the child which will allow it to possess them once they are born as they will now become a Hero.
Children born without this bond are Commoners

(the numbers that follow are preliminary and based on extremely rounded percentages based on the lifespan of an average human being, they will likely be tweaked for balance and playability and explained through lore. The average lifespan of a Commoner or Hero will be 2 real months or roughly 672 days in game)
Commoner pregnancies last 12 real hours or 6 days in game which is why finding an already pregnant woman can be beneficial, however the drawback to that is base stats are determined by the parents, so choosing who descends together allows for more custom stats. Hero's, because of the bond are born in 2 hours or 1 day in game.

During the pregnancy the player has time to alter the childs facial features with small variations to what they have inherited from the parents, and hair color.

Once born, the Hero transitions from an infant to a young adult at a greatly increased speed of a Commoner which takes 7 real days or 84 days in game (this timeframe will likely change to something closer to 1 real day, but I use it here to express that it will be a somewhat lengthy wait to encourage survival and give a heft to the death of a Hero or Commoner, as well as to encourage the player to continuously be Bonding with new Hero's and furthering the descension of their lineage) once this period is over the bond has fully matured and the Hero can be possessed which switches the gameplay into a FPRPG like ElderScrolls.

Mature Hero's can now descend with Commoners and pass on a fragment of their bond. Unless actively bonded with by the Hinj (which will incur only a 1/3 cooldown penalty) these children will be Tainted, halfbreeds between Commoners and Hero's that Hinj's will have more control over than basic Commoners.

Possession is never permanent, and the player has complete freedom to switch between playing as a Hero or controlling and influencing Hero's, Tainted, and Commoners as a Hinj.

The goal of the game is to build armies from tame creatures, magically created golems, hired Commoners and of course Tainted and Hero's, and war for control of territory and destroy enemy cities.

There's honestly so much more to the game than that, I've only just touched the surface, but this is the core mechanic that is the primary focus of the game, managing bloodlines and slowly evolving their stats over generations (each character has stats that are the average of their parents and will cap at a number that is likely 1.5 that number)
So the point is never to grow too attached with any one Hero since they can and will die at some point, but to pass on their genetics to future generations for further development.

Players will be able to descend their bloodlines together with the bloodlines of other players, but only one Hinj may bond with any Hero. Tainted born this way have enhanced controls for both Players, and this effect stacks each time a new player descends with his bloodline (it could, in theory, get to a point where every player on a server has enhanced control over a bloodline of tainted... unless it was changed so that bonds from previous generations degrade so that it could never be more than a certain amount of players who have such control)

Descending blood relations together is possible for freedom of roleplay, but if its too close (brother sister; mother, son) it incurs penalties detrimental to the bloodline and should be avoided. 5th cousins (or whatever further research says is biologically and ethically agreeable in humans) would descend normally.

Thanks for reading, please give me your thoughts and feedback on what could be expanded upon or improved, I'm eager to know if this is a game anyone but me would be interested in playing.

Cheers

The waiting is meant to create a sense of value for each life created kind of like how taming high level dinos in Ark takes hours.

One solution for players eager to play could be implementing a series of skill based mini games/tasks that a they can perform to speed up the process, increasing the bond so to speak. But this could mean letting the player play the hero as an infant and toddler, which could be interesting in its own way or turn out to just be weird. Two words: Fetus Minigame

Bond could also be adjusted so that it will work with any Commoner or Tainted, but in such a way that the bond is stronger in children or when made during conception, that way players have the option to jump right in. This could bring about a strategy where during a battle a player will use their Hinj to bond with one of the enemy forces to cause havoc, which I like in theory but will have to be specifically balanced so that it couldn't be abused

But the game would have plenty of things for the player to do as a Hinj, such as possessing animals and creating their own bloodlines and bonds, and influencing commoners to do things like build structures or farm or even tame animals. Like I said, I've barely touched the surface of what activities would occupy the players time. And time would pass constantly so even when you're not playing the game your Heros, Tainted and Commoners would still be growing, even while you sleep. After one day the process would quickly become too tedious to manage if it were to happen too quickly since every 8 hours a new Hero can be bonded with if they're from the bloodline of a previous Hero.