Things we like to see in games

[afa]

Those are not old games that I am talking about...at all. I am talking about SNES/genesis era at the very latest and often before, hell even some PS1 era classics age poorly in some aspects when you really sit down and think about their controls and mechanics.

And if you really want games that are "hard" you really need to go back to the early eras, and spoilers, they are not what modern games standard of fun.

 

People often forget gaming didn't start with pretty graphics (or graphics at all sometimes...) or their version of the "good old days"

It was very simple things like pong, space invaders, a simple one screen board with repetition and patterns that speed up. One of the oldest and most popular platform were arcade games, they were quite frankly micro-transaction machine build from the ground up.

THAT's the origin of gaming, THAT's your "good old days".

 

RPGs and text adventures were different because they trade "actions" for text. That was the way to have resource for story however slim it might be. That was what made rpg unique. Today, the definition of a RPG is vague at best.

Years ago I forgot who, but someone in the industry once said RPG will no longer be a unique genre. Instead we will see aspects of it in all games, and I think that is what's happening. RPGs no longer have monopoly on the story aspect of a game and have to shun actions since there are enough resources and manpower to do both (good or not is subjective), and all your leveling system, skill trees, equipment and the likes are obviously featured in other more action orientated games as well.

 

Also the whole FPS-lust has always been there but it has its ups and downs. From Doom to Quake then Unreal and then Half-Life then present day Halo, Battlefield, and CoD. That genre has its up and down time throughout its life cycle also. Farcry and Borderlands are also examples of meshes between different genre.

[Youwish1]

Resident evil is almost 20 years old same with chrono trigger. Graphics aren't everything, they never were but when a game did come out with good graphics it was a bonus, now it's the main focus because they want people to go OMG THE GRAPHICS LOOK SO GOOD then you play the game and it sucks and companies wonder why people complain. The only FPS i play these days is far cry and crisis, probably doom when it comes out. Battlefield bad company was also really awesome.

 

The origin of gaming was in arcades for the simple reason of hardware limitations. They needed huge machines to run those games. You couldn't very well release those games and have them be free. But it's different these days as you said we have the manpower for everything, we have the resources yet companies shove DLC in our faces, they cut every corner they can. Granted the actual developers don't have a big say in the matter it's the cooperate dinosaurs that fuck us over. I mean look at the kickstarter for shenmue 3. A fucking kickstarter announced on the stage at E3, they lied. They said sony would not be helping yet sony is helping and they would have anyway.

 

Regardless of this i still enjoy games. I praise games done right like the witcher, the last of us, bioshock etc. I'm just afraid of where we're going.

[Feliks]

I want an option to rip the memories of a game out of my mind, so I can jump back into something like Bioshock and not see the twist coming, or Dark Souls 1 and have that feeling of discovery all over again.

 

In fact, just do everything Dark Souls 1 did over and over and over and I'd be happy forever.

[Chaos63]

I want an option to rip the memories of a game out of my mind, so I can jump back into something like Bioshock and not see the twist coming, or Dark Souls 1 and have that feeling of discovery all over again.

 

In fact, just do everything Dark Souls 1 did over and over and over and I'd be happy forever.

 

Or playing Final Fantasy VII for the first time all over again.

Man, that's a fantastic idea.

 

[Youwish1]

I want an option to rip the memories of a game out of my mind, so I can jump back into something like Bioshock and not see the twist coming, or Dark Souls 1 and have that feeling of discovery all over again.

 

In fact, just do everything Dark Souls 1 did over and over and over and I'd be happy forever.

Can't tell if serious or not >.< If you are, man. I don't want to go back and get my ass wooped by ornstein and his bro again, even though i found it pretty easy.

[Feliks]

Ornstein and Smough were a hard fight, but remember beating them the first time? That feeling. I want to go back to my favorite games, and get that feeling again. The feeling when you finally parry Gwyn, or figure out how to stop skeletons from respawning, the feeling when you strut down the invisible bridges to find Seathe, or when you kill your first black knight, I want that feeling again.

[afa]

Accomplishment after hours or days of frustrations is nothing more than sigh of relieve for "well I never have to do that shit over again"

Lost of everything by the end of the game is a ground that isn't that well worn, rarely revered, and often somewhat controversial. We would like to think games are beyond the point of fairy tale happy endings, but when we are serve a raw deal there's a notion of so the player/characters did all that for naught.

And modern favorites like Dark souls and Bloodborne are quite heavy handed when it comes to asking the player fill in the gaps.

[StayFrosty]

Mature Dialog...from both PC and NPC, more so PC though, I find myself often cringing at the childishness of too many of the dialogs my character has a choice of...and for such Games as Skyrim I can't see how more choice and more mature dialog could be so much of a great financial strain to produce given it's silent text only.

 

And extreme Railroading, I can see how railroading is essential to keep the theme of the game running in a general cone of directions, but extreme railroading is un-necessary, I find this is generally most prevalent in regards to Game Makers Waifu's, forced friendship/love-in fests with a very dumb unquestioning, unthinking PC chasing along wagging his/her tail  

[Myst42]

A lot of interesting points to this. I'll add to the request for animations too.

Some things one could take for granted but surely they could do a much better work... leaving us to correct their crappy jobs.

Shame (Ding!)

Shame! (Ding!)

Shame...

 

Also. found something to better explain what I said before about gore and kills.

Killing in games is supposed to be cathartic. It's supposed to make you feel reliefed from the stress of daily real life

To the date I've found nothing more satisfactory in terms of killing than this:

 

https://youtu.be/TsY311dqgD8

[bjornk]

Wish they let me go "that way"...

 

 

[Youwish1]

Accomplishment after hours or days of frustrations is nothing more than sigh of relieve for "well I never have to do that shit over again"

 

Then you beat the game and find out that NG+ is a thing....all of a sudden, all the previous bosses you faced grow really big cocks and fuck you  

 

Fucking artorius...

[Feliks]

 

Accomplishment after hours or days of frustrations is nothing more than sigh of relieve for "well I never have to do that shit over again"

 

Then you beat the game and find out that NG+ is a thing....all of a sudden, all the previous bosses you faced grow really big cocks and fuck you

 

Fucking artorius...

 

 

TBH the only bosses I have trouble with now are Gwyn, Ornstein & Smough, and Manus.

[Vacaliga]

If i where to pick one thing it would be a better balance between being punished and rewarded.

 

To elaborate: i would like to be punished for actions taken as well as actions not taken and vice versa in terms of reward, dark souls naturally fails to mind at least when applying this to combat and of cause there are room for improvement but. at least that game has he guts to flat out say: Wanna be awesome? get gud!

Where in other titles (looking at you Arkham games) being awesome is just build in you cannot not be awesome, game won't allow it.

 

Press button to be awesome, keep pressing it to be more awesome, ooh now press this button to continue being awesome, awesome! Is this not awesome? This is awesome, because this game is awesome. Yeah hurrah....sigh

What a fitting title since every combat ark just involves going ham. 

[SweetrollStealer]

Immersion? One thing that bothers me the most is when NPCs recycle through dialogue way too quickly. I know it would take hours, and hundreds of housands of lines of audio, but I think it would be great if games gradually added more. Maybe someday right? 

[bjornk]

If you ever create a "let's design a role-playing game from scratch" thread, let me know, cause I'll have at least a few paragraphs to write about in it.

Here's a bunch of ideas and stuff I'd like to see in role-playing games specifically, including MMORPGs:

• Realistic combat damage model. (i.e. not based on health points (HP), realistically reduced combat efficiency when wounded, and so on).
• I'd like to see the character level system ditched completely.
• Realistic skill system that involves learning/discovering skills, practicing/improving them and forgetting about them when they are not used.
• Introduction of short-term and long-term character memory. Short-term memory is for the skills you've newly discovered or heard about but not yet practiced. Skills in STM cannot be used at all or cannot be used efficiently and will disappear in about a month unless practiced. LTM is basically your skills. They will never disappear but will degrade in time (into one skill level below) if never used or practiced.
• Realistic perk system: Hidden perks that are randomly given at character creation and only reveal themselves if the player pursues the appropriate skill/career path. For instance, you might be given a perk related to, say acrobatics, but if you choose to become a blacksmith you won't get any benefit from the perk.
• Ability to switch to another player controlled character and leaving your current character to its destiny. Basically turning your current character into an AI controlled NPC.
• Graves (and graveyards) for NPCs when appropriate, so that you can pay your respect to your previous characters by visiting their graves.
• Planet-sized maps with player constructed buildings and architecture (for MMORPGs).
• Ability to have sex with other players and create and raise children in order to populate the game world. Give them love and education if you want them to inherit some of the skills and perks that their parents have. What's the point? Well, these children will be reserved characters aka "slots" for you to switch to if you wish (for MMORPGs).
• Aging PCs and NPCs, that eventually die of old age or sickness.
• No magic/enchanting and other fantasy crap.

[jxm]

Fantasy Worlds

Depending on the setting, there could be combinations of these or only a few to keep it reasonable.

 

 

• Dragons. Yeap. I'm a nerd. I like dragons in fantasy worlds. Just leave me be. Only dont forget to make more of those who are also friendly. I totally hate killing all of them.
• Giant Trees. Because we have not enough games with giant trees. Why not when they're so fucking pretty? Example: Kashyyk fictional world (Star Wars homeworld of them Wookies)
• Steampunk. Yeap I like retro-futurisic victorian age steam machines and gears too. They look awesome.
• Cyberpunk. If you want a futuristic setting, this is the rule. Go watch Blade Runner or something before attempting a futuristic game
• Dwarven cities. In most lore types these are awesome underground mazes, so, make more of those. Kudos for Skyrim and Dragon Age Origins.
• Floating cities, islands and things. Because we definitely don't have enough of those.
• Lots or art styles. A game is more visually aesthetic when it has more than one artistic style in their content. Lets say for example, elven, dwarven, human, oriental and arabic. But why stop there? there are plenty of other art styles to dig in depending on the setting. Take demonic or alien like H.R.Giger's artworks. maybe robotic or enochian. Even lovecraftian... pick your poison.[/spoiler

 

I still want a damn Sword and Sorcery - Setting in true Conan the barbarian- Style ...

 

No dragons (at least no hoarding-dragons with a taste for virgins), no dwarves, elves, mages with fancy-heads, but also no magic machinery...

 

But warriors in loincloths chopping off limbs, amazons in default-skimpy-armor. Harsh and brutal conditions, may it combat or weather and climate (might be a conflict with the loincloths so ^^). Gratuitous nudity (free the nipples!). Magic that is dark, primevil, dangerous and bloody. With a world that's worth exploring, with ancient temples and unnamed horrors waiting at the waysides, taverns that are worth visiting for a little brawl, info, getting work and quests and and and and ...

 

Not going to happen because it cannot be sold to kids hence no profit? Well, hear me! FUCK THE KIDS! ... oh, no, I don't mean it like fuck the kids, I mean FUCK the kids! In like ... well...*sigh*...*gets outta here fast*

 

[l33tMan]

 

<p>If you ever create a "let's design a role-playing game from scratch" thread, let me know, cause I'll have at least a few paragraphs to write about in it.Here's a bunch of ideas and stuff I'd like to see in role-playing games specifically, including MMORPGs:

• Realistic combat damage model. (i.e. not based on health points (HP), realistically reduced combat efficiency when wounded, and so on).
• I'd like to see the character level system ditched completely.
• Realistic skill system that involves learning/discovering skills, practicing/improving them and forgetting about them when they are not used.
• Introduction of short-term and long-term character memory. Short-term memory is for the skills you've newly discovered or heard about but not yet practiced. Skills in STM cannot be used at all or cannot be used efficiently and will disappear in about a month unless practiced. LTM is basically your skills. They will never disappear but will degrade in time (into one skill level below) if never used or practiced.
• Realistic perk system: Hidden perks that are randomly given at character creation and only reveal themselves if the player pursues the appropriate skill/career path. For instance, you might be given a perk related to, say acrobatics, but if you choose to become a blacksmith you won't get any benefit from the perk.
• Ability to switch to another player controlled character and leaving your current character to its destiny. Basically turning your current character into an AI controlled NPC.
• Graves (and graveyards) for NPCs when appropriate, so that you can pay your respect to your previous characters by visiting their graves.
• Planet-sized maps with player constructed buildings and architecture (for MMORPGs).
• Ability to have sex with other players and create and raise children in order to populate the game world. Give them love and education if you want them to inherit some of the skills and perks that their parents have. What's the point? Well, these children will be reserved characters aka "slots" for you to switch to if you wish (for MMORPGs).
• Aging PCs and NPCs, that eventually die of old age or sickness.
• No magic/enchanting and other fantasy crap.

 

As a short disclaimer before I express my own opinion, which conflicts quite severely with this: everyone is entitled to their opinion and no opinion is of lesser value than the next one, yet this freedom does not grant protection from criticizm. What I'm about to write is in good faith.

I just need to protect myself in case I offend anyone. Criticizing is serious business

 

• A system that tries to hide its HP pool roots and tries to account for the differences among bullets in penetrating power and stopping power is already implemented in some games. The closest to mainstream from these is the ArmA series (and there is also a zombie survival mod for it). The games are far from polished and many comforts such as fluid movement have been sacrificed in favor of a physically accurate world. I don't know if the games are really realistic, but the question of life or death from a single bullet seems a lot more random (that's why I use sniper rifles. It's the only reliable two-shot-to-armored-chest kill). You could try it and decide. It would be nice, but not in the current implementation - needs polishing.

• Ditching the skill system completely and replacing it with actual real-life-inspired memory? Have you ever contemplated at what you do in, say, Skyrim when you don't role play? The "practice to increase skill" concept breaks gameplay in the long run. Locking skill progression to activities only works if you are a dedicated roleplayer, otherwise ordinary gamers will just end up grinding skills (remember the mighty iron dagger) or using the console. Adding setbacks in the form of forgetting will only make the grind worse. Learning speech from slaying mole rats is ridiculous, then again it makes for a reasonable 120 hour playthrough, as opposed to your idea more suited towards MMOs and 1000 hour play-throughs

• Graves of previous PCs can be a nice thing when you start a new save, but they will require your saves to be subsaves put into a supersave. Leaving your PC to become an NPC will create huuuuuuuuuge story cohesion problems. You'd have to sacrifice the story completely, so this would only work with MMOs.

• Sex with NPCs is something that is missing from RPGs, but player-on-player sex is an entirely different and complicated matter. If we disregard the obvious gameplay problems, ESRB will flip their shit. But you would also force other people to regularly come back to the game to raise the kid with you - people have problems with this in real life, and you'd want people to have it IN games? Do you want to SELL the game at all?

• Character aging, weather and other long-term effects are only viable for very long playthroughs. If these processes were sped-up, they'd become annoying.

• If you don't like magic, I hear there's a game about medieval swordfighting just around the corner

Your ideas have something to them, but remember that for single-player games, some people might have enough after 100 hours instead of finding every secret game cell, and for MMOs, some people can go for months before logging back in and continuing play. Your ideas only fit a specific niche, and in game design, we need to be as broad as possible.

I think game modularity is the answer.

[bjornk]

A system that tries to hide its HP pool roots and tries to account for the differences among bullets in penetrating power and stopping power is already implemented in some games. *snip*

That's not exactly what I was talking about actually. I imagine a combat damage model that takes body parts into account and calculates how the PC/NPCs and creatures would react in combat if a certain body part (plus the ones connected to it in the case of an arm etc.) is damaged and not functioning properly, or is missing entirely, or if the damage dealt is deadly (e.g. when there's a vital organ in that body part and the damage is greater than the resistance of that specific body part). There is no "HP pool" in this design, instead, there is a damage model for the entire body and there are damage resistance stats for individual body parts against different damage types (like blunt, cutting, piercing as in M&B series). The precision of these damage calculations will have to vary, in order to make them scalable. More precision when combat is near, and highest precision, if the player is involved. In this model, if I can manage to chop off the right arm of an enemy, this may not kill him immediately but it will surely reduce his combat effectiveness below 50% or may disable him completely, may even render him unconscious due to blood loss.

 

Ditching the skill system completely and replacing it with actual real-life-inspired memory? Have you ever contemplated at what you do in, say, Skyrim when you don't role play? The "practice to increase skill" concept breaks gameplay in the long run. Locking skill progression to activities only works if you are a dedicated roleplayer, otherwise ordinary gamers will just end up grinding skills (remember the mighty iron dagger) or using the console. Adding setbacks in the form of forgetting will only make the grind worse. Learning speech from slaying mole rats is ridiculous, then again it makes for a reasonable 120 hour playthrough, as opposed to your idea more suited towards MMOs and 1000 hour play-throughs

No, there are two game modes in the game I imagine, real-time and "scheduled" mode. You don't have to "grind" in real-time in order to improve your skills, you can, but you don't have to. You can set a daily/monthly schedule for your character and let him/her practice the skill(s) on his own, even while you're not logged in, as in EO perhaps. Other than certain random events which may require your involvement during the scheduled mode, the entire skill training can be done in this mode with zero grinding. However, you have to invest years of your character's life in order to become a skilled professional, such as a master blacksmith or a master bowman, which suggests that you won't be able to master every skill in the game with just one character, as no one lives that long. He may even die without mastering any skill at all.

 

Why would you become a dedicated professional, say a master locksmith? Because there will be quests that require teams of dedicated skilled professionals. If you don't have a master locksmith you won't be able to open a certain door etc. Lose your healer or locksmith and you're screwed. This is to encourage cooperative RP. Again, keep in mind that I'm not talking about a conventional single player RPG here.

 

Everything in this game is modeled after its real-life counterpart, except it's very very simplified, but essentially the same. This is the direction role-playing games should go, IMO.

 

 

Graves of previous PCs can be a nice thing when you start a new save, but they will require your saves to be subsaves put into a supersave. Leaving your PC to become an NPC will create huuuuuuuuuge story cohesion problems. You'd have to sacrifice the story completely, so this would only work with MMOs.

No, all you need is one persistent world. You think of it as if it's Skyrim, or some other story-focused conventional RPG, but it's not.

 

Sex with NPCs is something that is missing from RPGs, but player-on-player sex is an entirely different and complicated matter. If we disregard the obvious gameplay problems, ESRB will flip their shit. But you would also force other people to regularly come back to the game to raise the kid with you - people have problems with this in real life, and you'd want people to have it IN games? Do you want to SELL the game at all?

When I say "players having sex" you probably think of Skyrim SexLab with explicit scenes of fucking and sucking, I presume. It doesn't have to be explicit at all. And again, raising children can be done in the scheduled mode with either both parents are present or with just one parent at a time (both parents will result in better skilled children obviously). And the best thing is, you don't have to do it at all, if you don't want to. If you don't parent them then they will end up being a random normal NPC. You can still pick one of them, or another random new char, but you'll lose the skills of your previous character if you do so, as your children failed to inherit them, due to the lack of parenting.

 

Like it or not, in order to make everything else work, all characters in the game have to age and eventually die.

 

If you don't like magic, I hear there's a game about medieval swordfighting just around the corner

I wouldn't try to imagine a game having mechanics modeled after RL, if I were to create a game with magic in it.

[l33tMan]

one big *snip*

 

Well then, I stand corrected. A bit. I had assumed, since the hottest things on LoversLab are Bethesda games and the Sims, that your ideas are to be implemnted into a Skyrim-type game where e v e r y single activity has to be done manually. Well then, now I assume that what you have in mind is an MMORPG game with a basic principle like in, for example, Battle Nations, where you have a long term part (base building) and battles. So I assume you imagine you will be taking your PC for a spin in some World of Warcraft dungeon and then let the PC wait for you in your city/town/hutintheforest/whatever living an automated life. Well, let's get started.

 

To start off, the damage model.

ArmA does not include maiming, dismemberment and decapitations. Still, its damage model is not that simple, even though its complexity is built on a bunch of "health" pools and some algorythms. Aside from the effects having a distinct delay after being hit, the system can produce a wide range of output conditions, ranging from "hey, I'm as if spontaneously bleeding" through significant staggers to death.

It works (for damage to infantry) by giving each weapon a damage value (8600-9500 for standard ARs), penetration category (9mm pistol ammo has different characteristics to 12.7x108 sniper), and raw damage (I remember the AK47 being 8 or 9?). Calculating using these parameters, the hit body part's parameters and distance, the system outputs a solution. Sometimes, you can enter a shock state (exists in real combat), where to come back into the game, you need someone to administer somthing like an epipen. Then bandaging up.

But I'm not saying the system is perfect.

 

 

Automated grindig. Nothing to oppose here. A partially automated MMO is something unique and never done before.

 

Graves and switching characters

Well then, it's not a single player game, but an MMO of social network proportions. Ok, that would work. Just be prepared to deal with generic voiceover and lines you might are inappropriate for the character you built. In the proposal I am writing, I have a similar feature, but designed for the single player RPG experience: in very short, if you ignore a questline, under certain circumstances, another NPC will complete it over time instead of you. Think about it (in Skyrim terms) like you are Harbinger of the Companions and Archmage of Winterhold - in the mean time, the Emperor still gets assassinated and the Thieves Guile reorganised.

 

 

Aging. Endless MMO means it is possible. Still, will the rates be real time (stop playing at 20, come back at 48, and the PC aged the same), or sped up? Or, god forbid, slowed down?

 

Raising kids and banging players

In that case, raising kids and having sex would most likely make the best sense only in longterm mode, and still it might be annoying for someone to not be just able to quit - but that's the same as quitting a clan. What's worse is the implementation into direct PC gameplay (when questing, clearing dungeons and other stuff): just stop for a moment in your life and appreciate the image of an obnoxious c- ... player running at your group in the middle of a dungeon spamming "sex me"... What I mean is, you will need a system to handle real-time player-on-player sexual behavior, for chat window commands aren't going to do. You'll have to address many questions in this field.

 

[afa]

Arma with CoD elite skill and mobile clicker and close style gameplay. This is either the best of time or the worst of time, I can't decide.

[Amonkira]

I'd just like more realistic combat. In Elder Scroll games I always feel the weapons are made of plastic, they dont have that feeling of weight and momentum behind them. If they would take the combat system from Chivalry: Medieval Warfare and put in future games it would be so awesome.

 

Also, location based damage, maybe to the point where even if you wear armor, if an arrow or weapon strike hits an un-armored spot you will take more damage. And insta-kill from a headshot... no one can keep fighting with an arrow through their brains.