#HashtagSymbolIsUnderused

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.

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. In-game movelists have became a standard feature after the 90s. Skullgirls was an exception when it was initially released in 2012. Being a digital-only game at the time, you had to look up the movelist online. Thankfully, the first patch rectified that issue, after receiving complaints.

For point-and-click adventure games, I like the having ability to highlight interactable objects/characters. It can be frustrating when I'm stuck because I missed an obscure object on the screen.

I like having automaps in RPGs and other games that involve exploration, I prefer an automap, although it not always necessary if the game has small environements with well-defined landmarks.

Not dissin' OP but QOL flummoxed me ATM. My BAC is BAU and I'm DOJ EOD. JIT, I caught it.

Also hate it when the game saves over it without the player's consent. (Hollow Knight is one offender here.)

yes sir

i bet all those ravers are producing vampire games as we speak!

Problem with this is that if we're talking of fixed regular time intervals, it's highly likely that at least at some point during the game that autosave will come in an unwinnable situation.

Less car navigation like features! This includes no detailed maps you can see every cave, city, town or hamlet, everything got a name, no step- or distance counters, no X or huge red circles marking the goal, no line marking the path from x->y, no mini-map cluttering the UI, none of this nonsense - just stop! That's not QOL features but a for dummies version of modern appliances turned game 'features' ...

Use mini-maps glued to the top, left, right or bottom of the UI, one eye will always be glued to this visual 'QOL grudge.' You can walk by the most beautiful scenery to miss a particularly beautiful plant or interesting looking building. flower growing by the wayside, goes unnoticed. As long as players are able to get from here to there without getting lost, whatever for-dummies features it takes, they are going to be implemented. It's very much the same with very detailed maps. Clicking on a quest to mark it as active, usually the place to travel to will also be marked on the map and mini-map. In some cases there is also a huge circle around one's goal and a path to follow or whatever else UI-designers come up with.

Using car-navigation style UI elements, very detailed maps, mini-maps, fast-travel, what game designers and developers take away interest in exploration and discovery off the beaten paths. Why leave the marked road to maybe discover that hut in the woods when both the woods are set-items, mostly empty and lifeless? Better stay on the road to get to the place you have to go to solve a quest instead! All that's missing is a pop-up telling players: You have arrived at your destination. Please turn off the engine now.

What game developers seem to forget or ignore is the fact that a game is a visual medium.They put so much time into the smallest details, a crack in a vase, shattered glass in a hut deep in the woods, yet they totally ignore that fact when it comes to path-finding, maps/mapping. Why don't they use visual cues to allow players to figure out where they are and which direction they have to go? The growth of moss, birds landing in tress, clouds, direction of light/shadows, the sun and moon, certain plants or fungi, flowers turning their heads depending on time of day, the flow of bodies of waters. There are myriads of intelligent ways to do this! It would facilitate exploration, to experience this sense of wonder looking at a particularly well done landscape feature, a plant or natural cave. Exploration for the sake of exploration without expectation to find some enemy to kill.

Maps don't have to be super-detailed. A drawing of landscape features will eventually evoke interest. Maybe this is where a player has to travel to find a quest? Maybe there is something hidden there, a treasure or something else entirely? When it's just another place on a map showing even the remotest cave, every place got a name, information about its size and inhabitants, the only reason to visit is to find the sword of godlike awesomeness. If it's just a beautiful cave located in a remote region difficult to go to, it ends up being considered a waste of time.

A map should facilitate exploration not hamper it! One should be allowed to mark places and take notes. Two essential QOL features sorely missing in most modern RPG. It would be awesome to be able to also draw on it, color in rivers, put that X where the spot is or the circle around the general area one has to go to. Adding landscape features or places automatically is a nice QOL feature as long as it's the place, an outline and a name if there is one. If the place doesn't have a name it would allow players to add their own for it.

Some designers and developers go out of their way, short asking me Would you like to learn more about the history or people living in this wonderful mountain-resort town? to tell me all there is to know about it. This can be considered flavor-text and it can be quite nice. Looking at it from a QOL-perspective or, rather its opposite, it's a huge waste of time and potential to incite interest.

After days of travel through wilderness fighting for your live, braving storms and beasts, you finally arrive in the kingdom of Roldilar. Here you will find the most precious armor and weapons created in all of Faerûn crafted by the famous dwarven master smiths having settled there in the 2nd century DR.

In the distance you behold farms and fields surrounding Granlora, a city known in this region for its famous watchmakers, wine and other specialties. You will find a visit to Hylda's worth your time and you should not miss a visit to the well renowned hot spring resort to rest for a day or two!

When there are famous watchmakers, weapon or armor smiths, hot springs, why is there a need to tell the whole history of a place and other artificial information? Why can't players find out about all that by visiting a library, by exploring a place once they get there?

NOT wasting a player's time is a QOL feature in any game. Mind my time, designers and developers! Show, don't tell. We are way past text-adventures where flavor text was the only way to convey a sense of direction, knowledge and whatever else is deemed necessary to become able to finish the game. Forget the time we are living in, where information is at our fingertips, car navigation systems are a common feature of our daily lives, intelligent maps etc.

When you are about to develop an RPG set in the middle ages, you will not find detailed maps, fast-travel like you would in a SCI-FI tv series and other such things. Yet you implement them because you consider them QOL-features which your players can't do without. Forget it! Think and come up with something different, real QOL features adding and not detracting from your game and what it has to offer.

Magic can serve that purpose in fantasy RPGs.

For example, Dragon Quest games have a spell that allows you to fast travel to almost any town you've visited, and such a spell is really nice to have. (Contrast this to Final Fantasy, which lacks such spells, though the earlier games at least had a spell to warp out of a dungeon; too bad said spell was frequently blocked in many of the games and disappeared when the series switched to optical media.)

Also, what about an RPG set in a science fiction setting where there would realistically be fast travel?
Which means not forcing the player to retread their steps just to go back to an earlier town to stock up on supplies.

Huh. This sounds like what QOL features you don't want...

Endzone (which I previously mentioned as being a builder/sim with lots of QOL, though not perfect) autosaved according to player-specified interval, and, when autosave is coming up, it pops up on the screen a 10 second countdown during which you can 'force save now' or 'cancel'.
Nah, I'm kind of with Mori. Sometimes games go way too far to break immersion and make the "omnipresent top of the screen compass and POI marker" too much of the game, where you're just following it rather than playing/exploring. I prefer it when the map is nice and detailed, and, if you do have a POI marker, it's there in a "vicinity". Quests should give directions. I mean, especially in fantasy games, you're not going to have a precise location.

Now, fast travel, that is an essential feature that shouldn't go away.

Edge of Eternity, the new jRPG to come to GOG, has good settings in this regard. You can turn on "immersive mode" that hides the compass and some other elements, or you can turn on/off the minimap. You can warp from any already-used save point to another (For a nominal in-game fee; so far about 1 battle's worth of ¤). The game options also let you enable/disable "save anywhere" as a difficulty option (default is off). [As a note, I'm leaving the compass on in the game right now, but only because the map/minimap isn't good about showing the currently-tracked-quest unless you're in its area... so more QOL needed there. I'd prefer to turn it off.]

Features that start as "QOL" at lower levels of implementation can go too far if they do more and become harmful. It was a great shift to move from "press button to collect each item after combat" to "auto collect" in many games. And a great convenience for auto-pickup-gold in ARPGs, and even spread to auto-pick-up-things-you'll-never-not-want-to-pick-up (components, potions [once they stack], etc). But if the game auto-picked-up literally everything, it would become an anti-feature. Or what if it auto-equipped new pickups for you? Or did an quick comparison and auto-equip if the game thought it was better? Those would all be anti-features, too. [Grim Dawn auto-equips if a lot is empty, and there's no reason for a slot to be empty unless you're doing a weird challenge.]

Looking into it, I think it might be an OpenTTD feature; the original game just let you select between GBP, FR, DM, JPY and USD.

I'd also add Hor+ widescreen to the list of things I now expect.

I meant it mostly as just a backup for your normal saves, not the only method of saving. Just make an auto-save every 15 minutes, keep 3 of them and always overwrite the oldest one. That way, you always have a fallback point.

Auto-collect has been a thing in action games since the beginning; if you collide with an item, you automatically pick it up. This includes those with RPG elements; Crystalis has you automatically picking up any money you collide with (most normal enemies drop money), while Castlevania 2 has you automatically picking up hearts. Faxanadu has you auto-picking up both gold and healing food.

There are actually a few cases where this can become an issue, like subweapons in classicvanias (especially in the case of a random subweapon drop), and some mario maker troll levels use this mechanic against the player (if you pick up this mushroom, you can't progress because you need to be small, and the only way to get hit requires going through a one way or else it kills you outright).

Also, Dragon Quest 1, in its original version, will auto-equip any new weapons and armor you buy or find. In the case of buying, you are given the option to sell your old equipment, and you can't buy the new item without selling the old one (as you can only carry what you have equipped); the two findable items overwrite whatever was in that slot (but they're fortunately the best-in-slot items). Note that remakes of DQ1 changed this to work like the rest of the series.

exactly , it is a very good feature