Gaming features which should be common, but aren't

[Sandman]

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?

[RGBVideo]

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.

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'.

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.

[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?

Customized music
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?

It's probably just too easy to put an mp3 player on the background and turn the in-game music off, so game devs ignore the extra work since people bent on listening to their own music will do so anyway.

[RGBVideo]

Quick Reply to Kassi:

It's probably just too easy to put an mp3 player on the background and turn the in-game music off

...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.

[General Ludd]

****ing modability. What more needs to be said?

[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

[Adagio]

Career

In most sports games I've played (mostly just racing) it's not possible to have a career. The campaign mode is called career, but has nothing to do with it.
In most of these games the "career" mode is kinda like a normal campaign in RTS games: You have the option to run 1 of 3 races. If you win you get to choose between the last two races, if you loose you can pick one of the 3 races again. Nomatter which way you race them and how many times you have to race them again, it doesn't make any difference. You don't get further in the campaign before you've won all 3 races. And when you win them a msg tells you you're the best racer in town... even after failing to win 99% of all the races you've been in



Why wont they just make the game so you have to raise in ranks. If you only win 1 out of 100 races, you'll always stay at the bottom of the ladder. It should be the players choice on which level to race: Racing against the "big boys" and win, then you'll get lots of cash and you quickly rises in the rank, while if you only race the people below you, then you shouldn't expect to get to the top



This idea should be easier to implement than the current campaign mode, while it makes it: more realistic, more fun and more exciting

[snoopy369]

Re: Quick Reply to Kassi:

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.

[snoopy369]

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...

[FrostyBoy]

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?

[Adagio]

Originally posted by snoopy369
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

I could imagine a career (or franchise) mode is more known in team-based sports games... Never played any of those though (not really my thing...)

But talking about racing:


Trash this

Most racing games I've played all have indestructable cars. Driving with 200+ kmh into another car who's also driving 200+ kmh (face to face) doesn't do any damage at all. Most of the times the cars just jumps a few meters into the air before they land again, ready to continiue the race... if they land upside-down it just goes a few seconds then magically it has all wheels on the road and facing the correct direction (even though your car landed in the opposite direction in the dirt next to the road)

I'm sorry, but I'd like to be able to trash the other players cars. It's always fun to see the enemy car driving around with no doors and no roof, while one of the wheels are long gone... Of course making an attack on the other cars can be dangerous

/me hopes the next Carmageddon games doesn't have as much randomness as all Carma games until now... And that they release it to a real computer, not some X-box (or was it paystation?)

[Adagio]

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.

Great game, though I was more of a player than a manager

Originally posted by Sn00py
How come no one does that anymore?

They don't? I thought all football/soccer/whatever games was mostly just manager games

[RGBVideo]

Trash this
Most racing games... blah blah blah

Doesn't the F1-series have this? F1 '97 for PSX certainly had it (what's more, it could be turned off). It really motivated you to try to finish races even if they were more than 40 laps long, not screwing up in the rain while not finishing last was a major and hard goal to do (at least if you were not driving a Ferrari). It was great, and it could be turned off if you wanted to play a quick arcade trash game with your buddy.

[Nostromo]

Say no to loading screens!

[Solver]

A feauture that should NOT be in a game - limited saves or savepoints. I don't care if the developers think unlimited saves spoil the game. I want to be able to save whenever the damn I want to. I never overuse quicksaves to make the game easy, but games with saving points are a major annoyance, where you get stuck at the same point over and over and can't save before it. In fact, I do not buy games anymore that have saves limited somehow - and there were a few games that sounded good. If you absolutely want to include limited saves, make them an option that can be disabled (Soldier of Fortune 2 had Custom Difficulty for that).