Gaming features which should be common, but aren't

[Sandman]

I don't mind limited savepoints as long as the game has a clearly defined mission structure. They can be a pest in free-roaming games, though.

[General Ludd]

Most games with save points (console games) can be played on emulators that allow you to save at any point, anyways.

[snoopy369]

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?

[Adagio]

Blah bla bla

One thing I would like changed in RPG games (I assume many will be against it) is the talking. I hate when you in RPG games have to go through an endless maze of what to say. I would like it to be "silent", so you wont hear the actual talk, but when you're done you get a "facts list" which tells you the information you found out while talking. The "facts list" could look like this:
-City of Katanga is just south of Agnatak
-Jane want you to beat up Joe in Katanga

This is more realistic and makes it easier for us who don't like to read 20 pages of manuscript and could make the game even larger because they wont need to spend time writing the manuscript...

[Adagio]

Ehmmm... where do those quotes come from?

[Urban Ranger]

Re: Gaming features which should be common, but aren't

Originally posted by Sandman
Area-specific character damage

[snipped]

Deus Ex was years ago. This sort of thing should be standard by now. But it's not.

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.

Originally posted by Sandman
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.

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.

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?

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?

Elminating mounts all together kills all these petty details without really hurting the story in any fashion.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
Co-operative multiplayer mode. It's usually so fun, it's strange why it's not included in more games. Is creating it very difficult or something? Or am I just one of the very few who enjoy co-op?

M.U.L.E. rocks

[Ben Kenobi]

A couple of things.

1. Captioning for all voices in the game. They have to write a script in the first place, so why not use that script to generate captioning? This is one of the reasons why I really liked Full Throttle, because you could pick up everything you needed in the game without having to turn the sound on.

I play a game like R:TW back home, and one thing that frusterated me was the battle sequences. I'd love to understand what my character is saying.

The same thing with the battle map. The battle map should alert me if enemy units have engaged a unit currently without orders. This is usually done verbally, but if it were done with a flash on the battlemap, and a blinking dot, then I could keep track of things much better.

It's for this reason I don't play very many Real time games.

[Sandman]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?'

[Ari Rahikkala]

Re: Quick Reply to Kassi:

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.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar
1. Some Zelda game.
2. Deus Ex
3. System Shock 2

I can't believe you didn't recognise the last two

I hate Zelda type games, and never got into Deus Ex (played for a very short time). and never played System shock...

[duke o' york]

A sense of humour!

I don't mean that every game should have the same useless jokes as Leisure Suit Larry. Does anyone really think that the radio stations spoil the later GTA games? As long as it doesn't spoil the mood that the game is trying to create, then more humour would be great. The Dungeon of Apolyton had some, er, passable jokes in, I suppose.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Sandman


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.

Or you could *gasp* leave the horse behind (without having them be easily acquired and disposable). That was a signifigant character event in the Lord of the Rings book, for instance, when the hobbits had to leave their beloved pony at the entrence to Moria.

[Asher]

Did World of Warcraft ever get around to including mounts?

Yeah. There's the normal mounts (+60% speed), one for each race (8 races total), each with 3 color variations.

Then there's also Epic Mounts (+100% speed), one for each race.

There are also 2 class-specific mounts (Paladin Warhorse, Warlock Felsteed).

http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Mounts.List

The Undead Epic mount is cool.

[Adagio]

This might not be a gaming feature, but it's a feature most games "forget" to include:

Why is it that EVERY TIME you start a game you have to watch 10+ video's. Yes, often you can just click, press space or press ESC to end the video, but why do you have to do that every time? Why don't they just have a "show startup video = false" in the ini file? And why is it sometimes it's not possible to avoid seeing the video?
Being forced to see the EA logo everytime I start some EA game only have a negative effect (for each time I see it I hate EA even more)