idbeholdME: Saves, that show a screenshot, time played, difficulty and a date when it was made. Also hate when you are bound to just a single save file which you have no control of and the only way of making multiple saves is manually backing up the file.

Have tutorials for basic/generic stuff separate from the main game or make them skippable and DON'T put any story or anything important in them. Having to replay unskippable tutorials every time I want to play through a game gets annoying quickly.

Loading screens should never auto-complete and should always have to be confirmed by a user input before getting into the game (the only exception could be quick-loading). Especially if you have missions briefings, lore, tips etc. in them. Definitely a problem if you have a PC which loads things very quickly.

Auto-saves at regular intervals, chosen by the player. Not many games have this but can be a life saver in case you forget to save manually for a long time.

Ability to make custom marks on map in games that have them. This feature has even been in Doom in 1993, no idea why so few games allow this. And when they do allow it, you are limited to only one... I hate having to tab out of the game and write everything down in a notepad (stuff I can't access yet, important locations etc.)

Put all configurable graphical options into the in-game options menu, even the obscure ones. I hate having to regularly go to the config files and edit stuff manually in most games instead of just being able to do it from the in-game menu. Make an "advanced" section or something like that, but I'll never understand why some options are usually hidden. Also, you should have to restart the game only when you change an option that actually needs it.

Always explain everything in-game. Tooltips or an in-game encyclopedia etc. The game should not require having the dedicated wiki open in a browser and tabbing to it regularly just to know how stuff works.

idbeholdME: Saves, that show a screenshot, time played, difficulty and a date when it was made.

SpaceMadness: For fighting games, I expect an in-game movelist. For the early home versions of fighting games, you had to refer to the instruction manual or even outside sources like strategy guides.

dtgreene: Actually, as I said, I prefer *not* to have the game show time played, or even track in in the first place.

(Speedrun modes excluded, of course.)

idbeholdME: Well, it's only tracking "clean" play time. Whenever you load a game, it gets pushed back. So unless you are playing through a game completely save/load-less, it really isn't an accurate measure anyway. But being able to sort the saves by time played can be helpful.