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General discussionGreat and obvious, but rare, game features(102 posts)(102 posts)
(102 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted September 25, 2015
Hm. One of my big bugbears is inventory management in general. As such, I really like it when games eschew Diablo-style loot grinds. Instead, I prefer being given 10 useful weapons, opposed to 2,000+ mediocre variants. EG: Metroid, Zelda, La-Mulana, and Megaman.
Post edited September 25, 2015 by Sabin_Stargem
Posted September 25, 2015
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Tallima: Also, THANK YOU! I had no idea I could turn them off in W2! Next time I find a QTE I'm having trouble with, I'll turn them off. I don't mind QTEs, but I hate when they're irritatingly tricky to pull off. The first major boss had one that I spent probably an hour on b/c it is very touchy about how long and when a button had to be pressed.
I turned it off before even starting the game and never looked back. So I don't know if you can toggle it like that. But hopefully it helps.
Posted September 26, 2015
Recently playing a game, I found a feature that I like: Consumable items are only consumed for the duration of the mission, but are restocked after it is completed. This means that consumables are equipment that have limited uses in the field. Great from an inventory management perspective, as you don't have to fiddle around with inventory or buying extra uses.

This also allows a game designer to balance consumables, since the player can't buy 99 potions to spam their way to victory.
Posted September 26, 2015
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Wishbone: Why is it then, that almost every game containing cutscenes also use the escape key for skipping them? It means that in most games, once a cutscene starts, you had damn well better stay glued to the screen until it's over, or you will miss it, because the damned things cannot be paused.
I completely agree! My husband will try and talk to me during a scene, and I miss what was said and have to reload my last save to see the cutscene again. That's what I really loved in "The Longest Journey". Not all of the scenes, but many of the cutscenes were available to view in the menu after seeing them for the first time.
Posted September 27, 2015
Well as you said my main bother is often with the cutscenes and their unskippableness or rather unpausableness (are those even words?)

I also find bit strange when games don't contain option for borderless mode, since being the guy I am with short attention span and need for multi tasking I often find myself alt tabbing out of games and borderless mode is a pure bliss for that.

Also I miss achievements that actually have meaning. The achievements "You have started the game, you have completed chapter one, you have completed story quest" are just terrible. I see achievements as something you should strife for and could easily miss.
Posted September 27, 2015
The ability to scale HUD elements up and down to the user's taste. This is great and obvious for at least two reasons. They're so obvious that I wont tell you. Just kidding, I'll tell you in case you're dumb and they're not obvious to you. :) Reason 1 is in case a user would prefer HUD elements to be larger or smaller due to personal taste/preference or due to eyesight problems or other factors. Reason 2 is that as time goes on, both the physical size and the resolution of current monitors increase and while some games do allow you to use ever increasing resolutions such as 2560x1600 or 3840x2160, most games do not let you scale the HUD up or down, so at the higher resolutions the HUD elements appear visually much smaller and can get downright difficult if not impossible to view and definitely makes games more difficult to play. An example game that lets you adjust the HUD scaling is Torchlight/Torchlight 2.

Now if game developers would let people configure the mouse pointer scaling also so that it is bigger than an electron on 2.5k and 4k displays.
Posted September 27, 2015
Controller button remapping. -.-
Posted September 27, 2015
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toxicTom: One thing I sorely miss in recent open world RPGs is the ability to place custom notes on the map.
This so much! It really adds to the adventure atmosphere to write down little notes. I remember I took a screenshot when I was done with the first part in Divinity Original Sin and I had so many notes, some I even slightly forgot I had put there but then immediately remembered why. Good times.

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Sabin_Stargem: One of my big bugbears is inventory management in general. As such, I really like it when games eschew Diablo-style loot grinds. Instead, I prefer being given 10 useful weapons, opposed to 2,000+ mediocre variants.
This too! So annoying with those unnecessary 99% items you find. Also, it's usually far meaningful to go from an item such as the Blue Boomerang (Zelda 3) then the Red one that throws twice as long (maybe slightly more) as opposed to the oh so condescendingly lame 1% better at something-abilities.
Posted September 27, 2015
Auto saves in certain games can be a blessing or a curse
Posted September 27, 2015
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robospongie: Auto saves in certain games can be a blessing or a curse
I think it would have been a blessing in Deadly Premonition. Some genius thought it was a great idea of requiring the player to replay an entire chapter in one sitting before getting to save...when previously, the first playthrough allowed you to save at telephones or use auto-save. To say the least, I was very angry to see my sidequests and loot go up in flames when the game decided to crash.
Posted September 27, 2015
I don't know why more games don't include this, but I remember an early 90s raptor type game which had a, I think, a 'boss' key or something to that effect. What it did whenever you pressed it was to pause the game and bring up a screen full of schematics, figures and equations. The idea being that you press that button whenever your boss walks into the office.

Seriously, more games should have features like this, and you should be able to configure it in the options. Alt-tab works in many cases, but it can be kinda slow, and then you still have to maximize Excel or whatever. Sometimes the music of the game continues the play as well.
What you should be able to do instead is to copy a number of images into a certain directory in the game's folder, and then whenever you press the 'boss' key then the game should immediately pause, cut off all sound, and display one of the images in the folder, which you can then cycle through. If you press any other key besides the boss key again, then the game should autosave in the background and close on the spot. Something like that would be ideal for something like FTL, or any other game ideally suited for the office environment.
Posted September 27, 2015
low rated
Here are some for roguelikes:

1. A tutorial with perma-death disabled. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (DCSS) was party there with a nice tutorial to teach you how to play the game. Unfortunately, permadeath was enabled in the tutorial, so if you die late in a tutorial, you have to repeat the early part. (Permadeath without random generation does not lend itself to good gameplay.)

2. A puzzle mode. Shiren the Wanderer had one and it was actually my favorite gameplay mode. Puzzles are non-random mini-dungeons (typically just one floor) where you start at level 1 with no items and have to clear the level using what the developers provided. It's especially interesting how some of the puzzles require things like damage boosting yourself over water with traps, equipping cursed items (so that you can't be forced to unequip them), and throwing money at enemies to damage them.
Posted September 27, 2015
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robospongie: Auto saves in certain games can be a blessing or a curse
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Sabin_Stargem: I think it would have been a blessing in Deadly Premonition. Some genius thought it was a great idea of requiring the player to replay an entire chapter in one sitting before getting to save...when previously, the first playthrough allowed you to save at telephones or use auto-save. To say the least, I was very angry to see my sidequests and loot go up in flames when the game decided to crash.
Oh god, if only most games I played on the console back then had the auto save feature
Posted September 27, 2015
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Matewis: I don't know why more games don't include this, but I remember an early 90s raptor type game which had a, I think, a 'boss' key or something to that effect. What it did whenever you pressed it was to pause the game and bring up a screen full of schematics, figures and equations. The idea being that you press that button whenever your boss walks into the office.

Seriously, more games should have features like this, and you should be able to configure it in the options. Alt-tab works in many cases, but it can be kinda slow, and then you still have to maximize Excel or whatever. Sometimes the music of the game continues the play as well.
What you should be able to do instead is to copy a number of images into a certain directory in the game's folder, and then whenever you press the 'boss' key then the game should immediately pause, cut off all sound, and display one of the images in the folder, which you can then cycle through. If you press any other key besides the boss key again, then the game should autosave in the background and close on the spot. Something like that would be ideal for something like FTL, or any other game ideally suited for the office environment.
1. You're not supposed to be playing games at work. If you really feel you need this functionality in a game, you probably shouldn't have the job you do.

2. If your boss is sufficiently stupid and clueless to actually fall for such a retarded scheme, you're probably better off working somewhere else.
Posted September 27, 2015
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Matewis: I don't know why more games don't include this, but I remember an early 90s raptor type game which had a, I think, a 'boss' key or something to that effect. What it did whenever you pressed it was to pause the game and bring up a screen full of schematics, figures and equations. The idea being that you press that button whenever your boss walks into the office.
All the old MicroProse games (F-19 Stealth Fighter, Silent Service, Gunship 2000) had a "Boss key" that would cut all sound, pause the game and display an empty DOS-style calc table.


Regarding quicksaves:

In Jedi Knight, if you save while dying (like, falling off a ledge into an abyss), loading the game will place you right at the point where you made the mistake. So no dying immediately after loading the game. I found this feature rather clever and wish more games would have it.
Post edited September 27, 2015 by toxicTom
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionGreat and obvious, but rare, game features(102 posts)(102 posts)
(102 posts)