What features should most (or maybe even 'all') games have?

[ZedClampet]

We've been discussing this a little in the weekly 'what are you playing, etc' thread, and I thought maybe it should have its own thread.

What are some features you think most, or maybe even 'every', game should have? From the other thread, we've discussed:
1) Ability to easily respec character--this lets you have fun experimenting with different playstyles.
2) Multiple save slots. Result is sort of the same as in above, but also gives you a chance in co-op games to have a solo game going at the same time. Also, you may like more than one playstyle and want to play both of them without deleting either one.

I'd also like to add, for the love of all that is holy, the ability to manually save your game (there was a thread somewhere about this). Maybe this one isn't for absolutely every game, Alien Isolation and other survival horror games come to mind. But all these Japanese games, for example the Yakuza games, and other games like Control need to get over the old-school save features.

What other features do you think should be more widespread?

 

[flashn00b]

Manual saving. We all know why checkpoints are an industry standard, and it's because there aren't enough buttons on a controller for a quick-save key.

 

[Brian Boru]

get over the old-school save features

I can't remember any old-school PC games which didn't have player-friendly saving—talking about 90s and 00s, before porting from console without upgrading to PC standard became a thing.

Features I'd like:

Options, options, options—see @Zloth's thread Options - Having Your Cake & Eating It, Too!

Travel aids on large maps—eg Fast Travel, grappling hook.

A 'First Timer' build or setup I can launch straight into—don't send me thru a ream of selection screens when I have no real idea what effect the choices have.

Better Difficulty settings, probably best set in an options screen. I usually want more enemies, rather than making them stronger or me weaker—or making my upgrades more expensive.

Procedurally generated maps—nothing like having every playthru be different.

Some strategy in strategy games, far too many in recent decades have followed the StarCraft bandwagon and become a click-fest and reliant on actions-per-minute.

A finish date for new DLC. I waited 5 years to buy Civ6, and there's still DLC coming!

Mod-friendliness! Design games so bits can be extracted and replaced by a modder's offering, and the installation can be easy for non-techie players—eg via Steam Workshop or similar.

Skippables. Fits under the Options above I guess, but worth highlighting on its own. Maybe I've seen all the cutscenes already on YouTube, let me skip them—especially interminable intros like Metal gear Solid 5 or Far Cry 4/5.

 

[Withywarlock]

Subtitles are only just becoming industry standard from what I've seen, and even then they've a long way to go. Subtitle background opacity, font size, colours, subtitles for different things. For all the complaints I see about so-called 'AAA' games not innovating, they're doing a whole lot more for their disabled players than most. The last indie game I saw that did something new with subtitles was Lucien II of all games. Correct subtitles would be grand too; there's a few games I've played where the spoken word did not match the subtitles, and I'm not just talking about that one time the (ironically Master) Speechcraft trainer in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion messed up some lines.

In addition to that, the obvious mentions of colour blind settings and other visual disability settings (see The Last of Us: Part II's astonishing alternatives). The more keybind and controller options, the better.

I could list many, many more options but I really think those should be the absolute minimum.

 

[ZedClampet]

I can't remember any old-school PC games which didn't have player-friendly saving—talking about 90s and 00s, before porting from console without upgrading to PC standard became a thing.

Features I'd like:

Options, options, options—see @Zloth's thread Options - Having Your Cake & Eating It, Too!

Travel aids on large maps—eg Fast Travel, grappling hook.

A 'First Timer' build or setup I can launch straight into—don't send me thru a ream of selection screens when I have no real idea what effect the choices have.

Better Difficulty settings, probably best set in an options screen. I usually want more enemies, rather than making them stronger or me weaker—or making my upgrades more expensive.

Procedurally generated maps—nothing like having every playthru be different.

Some strategy in strategy games, far too many in recent decades have followed the StarCraft bandwagon and become a click-fest and reliant on actions-per-minute.

A finish date for new DLC. I waited 5 years to buy Civ6, and there's still DLC coming!

Mod-friendliness! Design games so bits can be extracted and replaced by a modder's offering, and the installation can be easy for non-techie players—eg via Steam Workshop or similar.

Skippables. Fits under the Options above I guess, but worth highlighting on its own. Maybe I've seen all the cutscenes already on YouTube, let me skip them—especially interminable intros like Metal gear Solid 5 or Far Cry 4/5.

Some good suggestions. I disagree with a couple--the procedurally generated maps and a finish date for DLC--but I'm all in on the rest.

Options are a great, great thing. I wouldn't play all these survival games unless there was a tradition in the genre to provide options. Think Civ has lots of options? You should see the minutia that games like Ark and Conan let you dive into. I can barely remember how those games are with the vanilla settings.

Skipping options are awesome, too, although I rarely play games twice and never skip the first time through.

Mods already replace vanilla in every game I've ever played, but making each game more mod friendly would be fantastic. There needs to be a system of game development that doesn't break mods with any decent update. That's not really an issue with games like FC, but a lot of other games break the mods over and over, and you end up losing a lot of great mods through the years because the modders stop fixing them.

On procedural maps, maybe you could have an option on the second playthrough to try a procedurally generated map. I've just played so many games where the procedural maps are incredibly boring and lifeless, but maybe as AI continues to improve this will get better.

On DLC, I understand where you are coming from, but some games, like Hunter: Call of the Wild, are basically playable forever if you keep adding new maps and animals. TWW2 also benefited from years of quality DLC. It's better than buying the game again every few years. The worst example of this is sports games like Madden. They try to force you to buy a new one every year when they could just update the damn rosters in a DLC.

 

[Zloth]

Making a game mod friendly is great, but it is NOT easy! Particularly for tech support. There are many people out there who "just know their mods aren't the problem" and so will lie and say they don't have any. It's no picnic for coding, either. Asking for it to be in all games is asking for all games to have fewer features.

Multiple save slots are a must for another reason, too: corrupted saves. (Probably caused by a bad mod you made those poor developers support! )

The lack of color-blind support is one that makes me a bit angry. I'm not color-blind at all, but one of the things drilled into you in GUI design is that you never, ever, EVER make a color the only source of a piece of information. I just had to tell somebody on Steam's Mechwarrior boards that the game wouldn't work well for somebody who's red/green colorblind. It's extra infuriating because fixing it simply isn't very hard!

Oh, and as long as I'm on my pet peevs.... Microsoft, developers, could you all please just decide on ONE PLACE on my PC to put your saves and configuration files? I don't care if it's Documents, Documents\My Games, AppLocal, or whatever, but I'm tired of playing guess-the-save-location.

 

[Brian Boru]

so many games where the procedural maps are incredibly boring and lifeless

Yeah, I can see that being difficult for live action games. The lifeless part would require random generation and placement of NPCs and wildlife, which I imagine would be quite costly and difficult to implement. Even normal maps are often lacking—Sniper Ghost Warrior 3's large open world was all but empty, just a few deer and wolves scattered around.

a system of game development that doesn't break mods with any decent update

Again yes, it's a shame when that happens. It would be wonderful to have gaming like Windows, where Win updates only break a few out of millions of software running on the old version. That would probably require one game engine to achieve market dominance so it could supply a uniform 'abstraction layer' to devs and modders alike—doesn't look likely.

DLC. It's better than buying the game again every few years. The worst example of this is sports games like Madden

True, good point. I was speaking as a Patient Gamer, mostly only interested in the finished and polished product.

I'm tired of playing guess-the-save-location

Amen brother!

 

[ZedClampet]

Asking for it to be in all games is asking for all games to have fewer features.

Now, that's just not right at all. There are plenty of games I could list off that don't sacrifice features for full mod support.

 

[Pifanjr]

Skippables. Fits under the Options above I guess, but worth highlighting on its own. Maybe I've seen all the cutscenes already on YouTube, let me skip them—especially interminable intros like Metal gear Solid 5 or Far Cry 4/5.

I'd also like to add Pausables(?). I want to be able to pause during cutscenes in case, for example, the door bell rings in the middle.

Another feature I'd like to see more of is being able to speed up animations. The Guild of Dungeoneering has an option to make all animations three times as fast and For the King has a sped-up mode as well (though I haven't tried it yet). The Civilization series allows you to turn off all movement and attacking animations. These are things that should be available for every game with animations that don't really add anything to the gameplay.

 

[ZedClampet]

I'd also like to add Pausables(?). I want to be able to pause during cutscenes in case, for example, the door bell rings in the middle.

Another feature I'd like to see more of is being able to speed up animations.

Love these suggestions. There's a turn-based MMO called Wizard101, a sort of Pixar-esque all ages game, that runs animations after every player and npc's spell is cast. They are great animations, but after you've played a lot, you just want to move on. They've done a lot recently to speed these up, fortunately, but it's not an option you have. I think if you are playing solo or in a co-op group, you should be able to set the speed.

And pausing would be great. It seems like I most notice my extreme need to go to the bathroom when a cutscene starts.

 

[ZedClampet]

I was speaking as a Patient Gamer, mostly only interested in the finished and polished product.

I don't consider the existence of DLC to indicate that the product isn't finished and polished, Mr. Patient Gamer who can't play games if they have a 5 minute intro due to impatience. But you and I play mostly different games except for FC and Civ. But, for instance, I didn't consider FC4 unfinished until they brought out the Yeti DLC. It had nothing to do with the campaign, which is usually all I care about.

 

[Brian Boru]

I didn't consider FC4 unfinished until they brought out the Yeti DLC

Oh I agree. My comment re Civ was the constant trickle of new civs and leaders, which seemed to come out mostly in ones and twos. By all means, do a civ pack DLC with say a dozen new civs and 25 new leaders, that I could totally go for—but not the drip-drip tactic.

Patient Gamer who can't play games if they have a 5 minute intro due to impatience

No, that's not the reason, it's due to they not yet having a mod to skip the intro—Viva las skippables!

 

[ZedClampet]

No, that's not the reason, it's due to they not yet having a mod to skip the intro—Viva las skippables!

That makes zero sense, but I'll ignore it in the spirit of Christmas.

 

[Pifanjr]

One more nice feature that has also been mentioned on this forum before is to have some sort of recap available, as well as a way to relearn the controls of a game for when you get back to it several weeks/months later.

 

[ZedClampet]

One more nice feature that has also been mentioned on this forum before is to have some sort of recap available, as well as a way to relearn the controls of a game for when you get back to it several weeks/months later.

You really need to work at a AAA studio.

These are the two things that keep me from returning to games that I quit midway through. The lack of a recap or a replayable tutorial sort of thing for controls makes me feel like I need to start the games over from scratch, and a lot of times I just don't want to do that.

 

[Zloth]

Now, that's just not right at all. There are plenty of games I could list off that don't sacrifice features for full mod support.

I expect they did. Putting all those hooks out there as well as code to make sure stupid mods don't mangle the game in ways that are too horrible (like corrupting game saves) takes time and testing. Time and testing spent on one feature, like mod'ability, is time and testing not spent on some other feature.

 

[Brian Boru]

makes me feel like I need to start the games over from scratch, and a lot of times I just don't want to do that

I totally understand. Otherwise you'd have to go thru the intro again… *shudder*

have some sort of recap available

It's not what you're referring to I'm sure, but in my earlier days with Civ4 I used to love the 'replay' feature after the game ended—a sped up one-screen replay with the full map revealed, showing the main events as each civ developed thru the game.

a way to relearn the controls

Have you tried developing your own personal standard set of controls, and rebinding keys as necessary in games which differ? Ref the go prone thread.

If you have different standard sets for different genres—eg default for Windows, one for RPGs, one for Shooters, one for Racing etc—then a programmable keyboard which can hold different 'profiles' would do the trick.

 

[Pifanjr]

It's not what you're referring to I'm sure, but in my earlier days with Civ4 I used to love the 'replay' feature after the game ended—a sped up one-screen replay with the full map revealed, showing the main events as each civ developed thru the game.

It would be nice if you could get a replay just for your own Civ when you load a save.

Have you tried developing your own personal standard set of controls, and rebinding keys as necessary in games which differ? Ref the go prone thread.

If you have different standard sets for different genres—eg default for Windows, one for RPGs, one for Shooters, one for Racing etc—then a programmable keyboard which can hold different 'profiles' would do the trick.

It's not so much the specific keys, it's mostly the actual game mechanics I would like a refresher on, like for example the timing of a counterattack (or even just the existence of one).

 

[mainer]

To some extent, I don't think we could make a standard set of features apply to all games or game genres, even though a lot of those games blur the genre boundaries. Some things you folks touched on:

1) Ability to easily respec character--this lets you have fun experimenting with different playstyles.

Yes for the most part, at least in how it applies to RPGs & ARPGs. It can be pretty easy to create a character, or group of characters that just can't hack it, or could be better, and respecing mid game would be nice, although I think there should be a cost or penalty to doing it more than once. As far as doing different playstyles, many games allow you to build different characters and have saves dedicated to them exclusively, like in the ARPGs Diablo 2 Resurrected or Grim Dawn.

2) Multiple save slots.

I'd also like to add, for the love of all that is holy, the ability to manually save your game (there was a thread somewhere about this). Maybe this one isn't for absolutely every game,

Manual saving. We all know why checkpoints are an industry standard, and it's because there aren't enough buttons on a controller for a quick-save key.

Multiple save slots, quick saves, and manual saving are huge pluses for me in any game, and away from that whole check-point save mentality that many "AAA" games use now. I understand not being able to save at certain points (like combat or cut scenes), but if I need to quit the game at some point for whatever reason, I want to be able to return to that same point when I go back to the game. "Save on Exit", which saves the game state, works in some ARPGs like Diablo 2 Resurrected, but it's rare that I'll play a game for long that doesn't have manual saving. How many times have you played a game late at night wondering if you could hit that check point save before you really (really) needed to go to bed?

Better Difficulty settings, probably best set in an options screen. I usually want more enemies, rather than making them stronger or me weaker—or making my upgrades more expensive.

Multiple difficulty options are big with me, and I think it's important when we take into consideration accessibility for as many people as possible. It might not work for all games, but from an RPG standpoint I always appreciate those different options. It's finding that comfort level that makes a game fun, yet challenging, for each of us. I have no shame in saying that in my first Witcher 3 playthrough I played on "easy" and loved it, but was still challenged. Also, I have to agree that facing mobs of enemies is preferable to facing a bit bullet sponge boss.

Procedurally generated maps—nothing like having every playthru be different.

No, I don't think that works in most games, whether open world or more linear. It worked in Diablo 2, but that's a rare exception. I think that Bioware was trying to do that in Mass Effect Andromeda, but gave up on it (they had other issues anyway).

Mod-friendliness! Design games so bits can be extracted and replaced by a modder's offering, and the installation can be easy for non-techie players—eg via Steam Workshop or similar.

Mods already replace vanilla in every game I've ever played, but making each game more mod friendly would be fantastic. There needs to be a system of game development that doesn't break mods with any decent update. That's not really an issue with games like FC, but a lot of other games break the mods over and over, and you end up losing a lot of great mods through the years because the modders stop fixing them.

Making a game mod friendly is great, but it is NOT easy! Particularly for tech support. There are many people out there who "just know their mods aren't the problem" and so will lie and say they don't have any. It's no picnic for coding, either. Asking for it to be in all games is asking for all games to have fewer features.

The number one problem here in terms of modding is the game engine (I think that's the correct term) varies greatly from game to game. Skyrim uses the Creation Engine which is based on the Gamebryo Engine, Dragon Age Inquistion uses the Frostbite Engine, and there are many other variations or types of "engines" out there, that making them all easily modded would be impossible. It would be awesome, but I don't see it happening.

Another thing you'll never see, is a game developer offering tech support for a modded game. How could they? With all the mods and mod combinations it's just not possible. That goes hand in hand in a game update "breaking" a modded game. A game developer can't patch or update a game while considering every gamer's mod list. If your game is on Steam, there's really no excuse for your modded game to be "broken", as you can set it to "do not update".

Modding is one of the best benefits for playing games on a PC, but there will never be a unified standard for mods or modding.

NOTE: Sorry for the long post, I've been away for a few days. Nothing new to add at the moment, but felt the need to comment.

 

[Zloth]

If your game is on Steam, there's really no excuse for your modded game to be "broken", as you can set it to "do not update".

That's not an option anymore. (Too many people exploiting bugs?) You can have it update normally, have it update ASAP, or have it update only when launched. Sometimes developers will put the previous versions of the game in as "beta testing" options, but that's up to the publishers/devs. [/quote]

NOTE: Sorry for the long post, I've been away for a few days.

Welcome back! Next time, be sure to give us a week's notice and don't forget to set up your Out Of Forum automated email response.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Lots of good ideas on here. Most of my top ones are mentioned.

Definitely multiple save slots. I hate it when games don't have that. And also definitely manual saves. And in my opinion, you should be able to manually save at any time. But along with that, and I'm not sure this was mentioned, I'd like to see the ability to load a saved game any time you want in-game, without having to exit the game to do it. I haven't seen too many games that let you do that, and I've wished for that option many times.

Another thing I'd really like is the option to change the game's resolution from inside the game. A lot of games let you do that, but a lot don't. Some games only allow you to change the resolution from the game's launcher. I started a new game of Fallout 4 the other day, and I haven't played it on my current hardware. So I was testing the video options to see how far I could push it, and it was a major pain in the backside to exit the game every time I wanted to change some of the advanced settings. Even if the engine needs to restart after changes, you should still have those options available in-game.

I also would love it to be standard to always be able to skip or pause cut scenes. And another thing, games should always have a loading splash screen, especially the big games that take a while to load. I hate when a game doesn't have a splash screen, and you're trying to figure out whether it's really loading or not.

 

[Pifanjr]

And another thing, games should always have a loading splash screen, especially the big games that take a while to load. I hate when a game doesn't have a splash screen, and you're trying to figure out whether it's really loading or not.

I do you one better: every game should have interactive loading screens. Even if it's something really minor, like being able to rotate the objects in Skyrim. Or at least show me some useful information, like in Total War: Warhammer 2 where you can review the stats for your and the enemy units while loading a battle.

 

[JCgames]

A pause at any time... I get so sick of games, especially storybased games that can suck you into 10-15 mins of story with no way to stop it, Or stop and save. It makes me want to scream.

I spend 2 hours playing a game and finally finish the quest i'm working on and it rolls right into 10+ mins of the next part. I don't want the next part i want to quit, but i have no way of knowing when the auto save will kick in.

Every game needs a pause and a chance to save after big story events finish. Easily my number one pet peev. Bioware games are famous for this, but honeslty it seams like every RPG does the same bloody thing.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

A pause at any time... I get so sick of games, especially storybased games that can suck you into 10-15 mins of story with no way to stop it, Or stop and save. It makes me want to scream.

I spend 2 hours playing a game and finally finish the quest i'm working on and it rolls right into 10+ mins of the next part. I don't want the next part i want to quit, but i have no way of knowing when the auto save will kick in.

Every game needs a pause and a chance to save after big story events finish. Easily my number one pet peev. Bioware games are famous for this, but honeslty it seams like every RPG does the same bloody thing.

Have you ever played Quantum Break? The cut scenes are literally 20-30 minutes long each. They're full episodes in between gaming segments.

 

[Brian Boru]

ability to load a saved game any time you want in-game, without having to exit the game

You mean you want to say press ESC to menu, then click Load Save, pick a save, and you're good?

I don't think I've ever played a game that didn't allow that. It's complete BS to have to exit a game for that!

cut scenes are literally 20-30 minutes long each

That's more BS, unless the blurb states that's the nature of it.

i have no way of knowing when the auto save will kick in

We're on a BS roll! Too many devs seem oblivious to how they're giving the middle finger to players.