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Sandman
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Sinister Penguin
Aug 2001
time: 05:24
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This is the opposite of the thread on games cliches I made a while back. What features do you think ought to more common in gaming? What great ideas just never seem to have made it into the mainstream?
Area-specific character damage
As with so many great ideas, this was in Deus Ex. If your character gets hit in the arm, your accuracy suffers. If you step on a mine, you can hardly walk. Headshots mean a quick death. And the health meter shows the condition of each body segment.
Deus Ex was years ago. This sort of thing should be standard by now. But it's not. Most games still just have a health bar or hit points, rather than a more involved system. Maybe gamers can't be bothered with the extra management needed, or maybe they don't like playing by the same rules as the enemies. But I'd like to see games with more involved health systems. Imagine how cool it would be if your game character could get broken bones, blood loss or burns, rather than just suffering 'health loss'.
Some games are making steps in this direction - you can get scars in Xbox RPG Fable, for example. Maybe there are others.
Horses
How many games have a medieval or pseudo-medieval setting? Loads and loads of them. How many of those games have horses? Hardly any.
I don't know what it is, but for some reason games designers seem to go out of their way to avoid putting horses in their games. Maybe it's because the mechanics of riding sit poorly with the mechanics of your average RPG (too 'arcadey'). Maybe it's because games which have RPG settings tend to have prolonged sections underground, where horses make little sense. Maybe it's because horses are 'girly'.
But I'd like to see more horses in games. Someone, somewhere must be able to do make a decent representation of horseback combat. I mean, you could just port over the free-roaming GTA gameplay, and replace the cars with horses. Knock a highwayman off his horse, steal it, and go and do some robbing of your own. There could be all sorts of different horses to steal or buy; cheap ponies, wild horses, warhorses, racing horses, etc. Of course, with this system, it'd be difficult to have your 'own' horse - only a small drawback.
Did World of Warcraft ever get around to including mounts?
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VJ
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Helsinki
Dec 2001
time: 07:24
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quote:
As with so many great ideas, this was in Deus Ex. If your character gets hit in the arm, your accuracy suffers. If you step on a mine, you can hardly walk. Headshots mean a quick death. And the health meter shows the condition of each body segment.
Deus Ex was years ago. This sort of thing should be standard by now. But it's not. Most games still just have a health bar or hit points, rather than a more involved system. Maybe gamers can't be bothered with the extra management needeed, or maybe they don't like playing by the same rules as the enemies. |
IIRC, this was in SoF. Funniest game I had played in years, btw.
quote:
But I'd like to see games with more involved health systems. Imagine how cool it would be if your game character could get broken bones, blood loss or burns, rather than just suffering 'health loss'.
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Most of these were in FO, altough not properly implemented (in practice it was too easy to just reload a game if you'd rarely lose your eyesight or would cripple your leg).
Customized music in all games
Every game should have their in-game music in a folder where every music sample could be changed into whatever sample you'd want to change it. IMO very few game's have had decent soundtracks (FO/Outcast pop up into my mind); but it's a subjective question, so everyone should be able to change the background music to fit their own tastes. I don't know if there's any reason why this should NOT be done, so why isn't it always done? Why you couldn't change the music in, say, civ3, to whatever you wanted to listen?
edit:
Stamina points in FPS'
Since the days of Doom (literally, I invented it back then and have waited for it every fps game after that) I've been wondering when this becomes a standard: In every fps there seems to be no point in walking, it always is feasible to run around as much as possible. And in mp fps' (MOHAA, CoD are most blatant examples of this) it's perfectly reasonable to suddenly, in the middle of running through a town street or an open area, to jump around constantly; or when going in an area with lots of places to hide in (ie. in a forest, in the middle of several bushes) it's useful to quickly crawl well over 15m, even when carrying around an assault rifle, 200+ bullets (ie. >5 clips), around half a dozen grenades, pistol and your clothes (remember, in winter they can weigh a lot. Even after this, you can easily shoot with the most amazing accuracy. Ridiculous, isn't it?
What I'd like to be seen done is a stamina bar which can be seen on the top-corner of your screen. When the bar is full, you can easily run around at your maximum speed, dive, climb, etc. but it'd go down when doing any of those activities or anything else which is stressful to your body. When it's nearly empty, you'd have problem even when running (you certainly wouldn't be able to jump around), your aim would wander around (breathing heavily a lot kinda causes that, lungs in good use), you could even drown when swimming. Resting would quickly regain this bar to maximum. This was done in the original Tomb Raider, though primitively (only when diving) and has been ripped directly from there in it's basic functionality to some other famous ones (ie. FC), but I'd like to see it becoming a standard in it's extended form instead of a novelty.
Ok, that was kinda long explanation. Perhaps I need to practice my English a bit in order to explain my ideas quicker in the future.
Last edited by VJ on 13-02-2005 at 18:23
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Adagio
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Make each game different
Ever played Tropico? Yes, I know, not the best game around, but a great thing about this game is it included a feature which worked real nice. For those who never tried it:
Every time you started a new game, you could create your own character (like in RPG games) which has different effects in the game (cheaper buildings, better military, more tourists, etc)
You didn't have to use pre-defined characters, but could build one yourself from scratch
This is perfect to use in most RPG, RTS and Tycoon games, but for now it's only common in RPG games 
Most RTS and Tycoon games suffer because after short time you've learned the best way to beat the game in shortest time possible, coursing replay value to go down
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snoopy369
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Of the Peanuts Gallery
Apr 2004
time: 23:24
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quote:
Originally posted by VJ
...except most of these modern games (Civ3 and your favourite, HoI2) very easily just crash (sometimes they even fux0r explorer.exe, yay) when you alt+tab them. And external mp3-player creates an additional load to your RAM. And some games are so extremely modern that you can't even alt+tab them. And in some, you can't turn off the music, you can just silence it (which means that your OS silences the channels required to play music, which are used by your mp3-player.  )
In short, it's always a major PITA. Unless you're playing some light fw-game which Ari Rahikkala has recommended to you. |
Dunno what you're running, but Civ3 alt+tabs just fine for me every time (win2000).  Anyway you can just run it in the background before you start civ3 or whatever ... and most games have an in-game volume that's separate from the OS volume.
But regardless, you are right, it should be easy to switch out the music files (one of the few things EA does right imo). 
Environmental Ineractability. I hate it when a game feels ... fake ... because I can't play with things in the environment, especially an RPG. Morrowind is the only one i've played that does this well (although not perfect). If there's a gold plated cup on the table, and nobody's watching, and i'm playing a thief, I want to pick up that gold cup, AND the silverware next to it.
Meaningful Replayability. A lot of RPG and similar games claim "Replayability", but the game is not very different the second time around, with you doing roughly the same things both times (Vampire:Bloodlines, ie.). If I am going to play an evil character the first time and a good character the second time, I want to have a totally different set of things happen to me. The plot can be the same - but the quests or actions or whatnot should be different enough that I feel i'm playing a second part of the game, not just the same game over again. Morrowind and similar games do this a little, but the interactions of NP characters with evil vs. good characters isn't varied enough.
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snoopy369
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Of the Peanuts Gallery
Apr 2004
time: 23:24
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quote:
Originally posted by Adagio
Make each game different
Ever played Tropico? Yes, I know, not the best game around, but a great thing about this game is it included a feature which worked real nice. For those who never tried it:
Every time you started a new game, you could create your own character (like in RPG games) which has different effects in the game (cheaper buildings, better military, more tourists, etc)
You didn't have to use pre-defined characters, but could build one yourself from scratch
This is perfect to use in most RPG, RTS and Tycoon games, but for now it's only common in RPG games
Most RTS and Tycoon games suffer because after short time you've learned the best way to beat the game in shortest time possible, coursing replay value to go down |
lol, you posted that just as I had hit reply and posted something not very different
On Career mode, I play mostly american sports games, particularly NFL and MLB games (but some NBA, NHL, and even FIFA). EA Sports does a decent job of career mode here, called "franchise" because they're not single-person sports but team sports, but only recently; they've started to throw in things like stadium upkeep, team income, etc. that make it a bit more interesting. I do wish they'd do a better job making the player improvement/etc. more interesting (ie whether a player gets better or worse during the off-season), and also ...
Varigated and Responsive Difficulty Levels. If I'm playing a sports game in 'franchise' mode, I want enough difficulty levels (or settings that affect difficulty) such that I can play on a level that is hard enough for me to be challenged without being too hard. I play a lot of sports games, and on all of them - with one exception, HH2003 - I find one difficulty level that I can just kill, one level that I can 'learn' to beat easily (but can't beat easily out of the box), and then the next level is too hard for me to have a chance at. (Admittedly I'm not very good at sports games, as many people can beat them on 'hardest level'.) I want a game that has a greater spread of difficulty levels, so there's always one that's 'just right' for me (even as I get better) - no beating it by a ton, and no getting blown away.
I also want one that adjusts to my ability when playing in franchise mode - so if I go 16-0 en route to winning the Super Bowl, it gets a little harder next season; and if I go 2-14 en route to a #1 draft pick, it gets a little easier. Of course you'll learn eventually to beat the harder level - that's the point - at which point it gets a little harder again.
This isn't just for sports games; RPGs and FPSs could easily do this as well, automatically adjust for your playing ability...
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snoopy369
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Of the Peanuts Gallery
Apr 2004
time: 23:24
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quote:
Originally posted by Sn00py
Anyone remember Speedball 2? In that game you could be a manager and manage the team, I think you could set up every single player in your team, appearence, skills, armor, etc. It was a lot of fun.
How come no one does that anymore? |
Most games that I play have that option ... coaching instead of playing. Madden 05, High Heat 04, MVP 04 have those options at least ...
There are also a lot of games that ONLY do this, although not the best sellers (though some sell very well). Particularly baseball, you have a lot of games where you are running a franchise and there's no graphical interface at all even, just doing the manager's job ... I don't play them so I forget the names, Backyard something i think, Sandbox something also i think?
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Sandman
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Sinister Penguin
Aug 2001
time: 05:24
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quote:
There are pros and cons to such a system. The greatest disadvantage is it emphasize luck even more. An AD&D-esque comat system is already somewhat luck dependent, this just makes the whole thing worse. Just imagine, a lucky headshot by some random character in a random encounter kills off your main character that you have spent weeks to built-up for the final encounter. That is just going to spoil the whole game for anybody. |
Nothing wrong with luck. Most multiplayer FPS' have lethal headshots - is that game-spoiling?
You can wear a helmet, anyway.
quote:
While missing horses (and other mounts) may seem a distraction from realism by some, it is a good comproise. If your character has a horse, he will need to feed it, rub it down, wash it on occasion, and do a lot of distracting things that he doesn't need to do if he doesn't own a horse. If he doesn't need to do these things while owning a horse, it's probably a bigger distraction from realism than not having any horses in that world. |
????
Very few games bother to make it necessary to feed or wash your main character, why the heck would these things not be abstracted for the horse as well? It's not a 'bigger distraction from realism' any more than having male characters who don't need to shave. Silly objection.
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Then there's the problem of going into a dungeon or cave where the party is going to exit at another location. Is the party going to bring the horses along? Can the party bring them along? What is going to happen to the horses if you leave them there? |
Well, you can overcome this 'problem' by not having any two-exit dungeons. Or making horses easily acquired and disposable, like the cars in GTA.
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The problem gets worse when we come to exotic mounts. Suppose some character in a party has a griffin. Is that thing going to eat horses owned by other people when it gets hungry? |
Sod exotic mounts. I want a game where horses aren't a poor man's dragon. A bit like games where tanks aren't a poor man's battlemech.
Besides, who said anything about parties? I'm not necessarily advocating it be an multi-character RPG. A one-character RPG, an action game, anything.
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Elminating mounts all together kills all these petty details without really hurting the story in any fashion. |
Yeah, and you could eliminate the vehicles from GTA, Halo, etc to kill all the petty details of fuel supplies and never-ending ammo. But for some reason, they managed to include vehicles without making the game a maintainance-sim. I'm quite sure you could include horses without bothering with feeding, grooming or 'what happens if one character has a griffin?'
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Ari Rahikkala
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Unreported loss of streaming in atomic read operation
Oct 1999
time: 07:24
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quote:
Originally posted by VJ
In short, it's always a major PITA. Unless you're playing some light fw-game which Ari Rahikkala has recommended to you. |
Incidentally, many of these features are rather common in roguelikes. For instance, UnReal World (and some others) has area-specific damage: If you hit someone on the feet, they might fell fall down, if you hit them on the hands, they might drop their weapon, etc. NetHack has horses and horseback riding. UnReal World has stamina... and bloodloss, starvation, encumbrance and incapacitating wounds, too. Pretty much roguelikes all are basically designed to be played over and over again, too. And if meaningful interaction with the environment is what you're looking for, do try Nethack - there's a reason why people say the dev team thinks of everything.
Of course, there are a few features among these that roguelikes don't have... for instance, saved games (it's ironman all the way through) and co-op multiplayer (they're pretty much all single-player and single-player only). However, those should really be considered benefits:
- Not allowing savescumming makes a game more engaging and challenging, makes it impossible to bore yourself by repeatedly trying to go through some place by repeatedly loading a saved game and trying the same old tactics, and makes the feeling when you finally get through a game for the first time that much more rewarding. And in case you're wondering, it's only a couple of weeks since I finally managed to save the world for the first time in ADOM, and now I'm spending way too much of my time playing that game again .
- You're never in a hurry when playing a roguelike. When you're in a bad situation you can go away, perhaps have a coffee or, if you want, read a book, and when you come back, press exactly the right button that will get you out of trouble. This means that you can actually ponder your tactics pretty deeply, and I really find that rather fun. Any kind of multiplayer capability would make it impossible to make a game independent of timing this way.
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13-02-2005 16:19
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