[benny_a]

I think this is worth discussing. Games are getting more sophisticated with almost every release and decisions that are adopted by the industry to solve certain issues have new issues arise from that.

My first example is Max Payne 3 basically solved an issue with non-regenerating health, that you can end up in a scenario where you're unable to continue because you don't have enough med-packs with you but you keep dying.
To get past this point, you would have to restart the whole level over and not use the medpacks you find until the part you were stuck on.

What happens is and I don't know if this is the first but it's the first game I noticed it in is that when you keep dying at a checkpoint once, you restart the game as came into it. This is the way check-pointing in games work nowadays.

2nd death: You get ammo for one more reload.
3rd death: You get ammo for two more reloads.
4th death: You get an additional painkiller in your inventory. More ammo.
5th death: You get more of both, etc. I'm not sure of the exact formula in how this continues.

At the same time the game spawns additional painkillers in the world that you can pick up.
This is also a system that can easily be disabled in higher difficulties for the people that chose to play the game that way. Max's health decreased or the enemy's health increased will not be necessary but the end result of increased challenge is still there.

My second example is Batman: Arkham Asylum.
Where Max Payne 3, like all Rockstar games IMO, fails is checkpointing. In most of their games there isn't even in-mission checkpointing and if there are like in Episodes of Liberty City they are done after a cutscene which might be 10 minutes in.

Batman: Arkham Asylum does checkpointing right. And the main reason for that is consistency. Every time you walk through a door you get a checkpoint. This consistency allows the game to have surprises that other games with weaker checkpointing systems don't have.

The following scenario I'm sure you already experienced: The game has inconsistent checkpointing but always 10 seconds before you face-off against a boss. The surprise of the big boss battle is thus spoiled, because over the course of the game you have figured out that now is a big fight coming up that they had a high percentage of playtesters fail.

What other designs do you think should be adopted by more games?

[Man-is-Obsolete]

Auto completion of some of the quests in xenoblade was a simple touch that had a big impact on overall enjoyment.

Also instant restart of a level like seen in Rayman Origins is a great thing as well. Especially on time trial attempts.

[Collider]

This is not anything about gameplay, but a gamesetting.
That thing about setting null point of controllers in MS FSX was a good thing.
I want that thing almost every game. Since, most of 360 controllers (mine also) gets the stick fucked up easily and dead center is not there virtually.

[snoopeasystreet]

In score based games, developers should include an average score in addition to the high score. Breaking your high score feels great but by the nature of it, it doesn't happen very often. Including an average score gives the player a sense of progression and that they're (hopefully) actually getting better at the game.

The only game I've seen do it so far is Drop 7 but I'm sure there's more out there.

[fart town usa]

My brother and I were playing gta4 last night, goofing off and whatnot. I mentioned how it would be great if they implemented a session marker system, the one featured in the skate games. It'll never happen but it would be so convenient for going off jumps and etc.

[Black_Stride]

Dynamic/Adaptive Difficulty.
Makes every game that much more challenging and fun(cept for RubberBand AI in some NFS games and Split/Seconds later rounds)

Resident Evil 5 - Dont get hurt and the enemies get tougher, get hurt alot and enemies get easier.
Unreal Tournament - Adaptive AI.....every match is a challenge cuz as you get better, they get better.
MK vs DC - Fail enough times and the game gets easier
Pretty much every Capcom fighting game - Win too much it gets tougher, lose a bunch it gets easier
TriggerHeart Excelica - Do well in the level and the boss will have more forms. SO the better you are the longer/harder the boss fight is.

Fast Restart
Trials HD and Evolution - Hit one button restart the checkpoint, hit another restart the level, saves the frustration of pausing and going to restart or waiting to frek.

[Squishy]

Continuous autosaving as seen in, for example, Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. It removes the ability to "cheat" by loading a previous save and doing something else instead. The consequences of you actions are permanent until new game plus. What I hate most in many WRPG's is being able to revert back to a previous save the instant you make a mistake, because there's no risk involved in making the "wrong" choice. Deus Ex in particular I believe would benefit greatly from this. Oh, and Skyrim too, especially Skyrim.

In addition to this, your exact location (well, pretty much) and all the level data, enemies killed, etc. is retained when you exit the game. Diablo III in particular would benefit from this. At least from what I've played of the beta, when the connection is inevitably lost, you lose progress made through a dungeon and have to do it all again. Bullshit if you ask me.

[matrix-cat]

I've always thought Beyond Good & Evil's method of text input was incredibly clever, but I've never seen it used anywhere else. It's basically a spiralling radial menu of letters that you roll through with the analogue stick; it's incredibly simple and it works perfectly. I think about it pretty much every time I awkwardly enter text on a virtual keypad with my controller and feel like ending it all.

[benny_a]

In addition to this, your exact location (well, pretty much) and all the level data, enemies killed, etc. is retained when you exit the game. Diablo III in particular would benefit from this. At least from what I've played of the beta, when the connection is inevitably lost, you lose progress made through a dungeon and have to do it all again. Bullshit if you ask me.

I have to disagree with your example. Diablo 3's trade-off for not having checkpoints the way other games have is off-set by the randomness of the world every time you enter it.

I think for a game like D3 this trade-off is worth it, because you're supposed to play the same quests over and over again.
If everything was kept static and you always knew what to expect it would greatly diminish what makes that game stand out.

But on the other hand they could maybe retain the randomness but instead of generating the world on join, they could generate the world when you choose a quest. Thereby having checkpoints but still having randomness.

My brother and I were playing gta4 last night, goofing off and whatnot. I mentioned how it would be great if they implemented a session marker system, the one featured in the skate games. It'll never happen but it would be so convenient for going off jumps and etc.

Yeah, session markers are great.

Also instant restart of a level like seen in Rayman Origins is a great thing as well. Especially on time trial attempts.

The less loading times games have the better. Trials would never be so big if it didn't have instant restarting. Loading into a game in FIFA is fantastic as well, because you can practice shots while the stadium and team loads. And the loading times, even online, are less than 15 seconds.
And you don't mind those, because they are interactive.

[benny_a]

Because a few of the things mentioned here are technology driven, I'm going to add another thing that I hope will be adopted more.

I love the way looting in Metro 2033 works.
You don't go to a dead body and an inventory pops up that you press 'Grab All' on, but rather you have to go to the individual spots on the body where that enemy would have his grenades placed to pick up grenades.
You need to check the belt to get his ammo. They are all visible on the model of the enemy and when you pick them up they disappear from the body.
This is something that I think only first person games need to bother with (at least the grabbing part, the display part I think should be adopted by all games.)

When an enemy is shot in the foot in Max Payne 3 he falls over. Sometimes he doesn't even bother to stand up, but rather shoots from a prone position.
Modern military shooters, which I'm not a fan of, need to adopt this. If I shoot someone in the foot, they shouldn't die immediately. They should fall over. This should also happen in Multiplayer. Someone should not be able to cross the street when I'm shooting him in the leg.

[feint_ruled]

Dynamic/Adaptive Difficulty. Makes every game that much more challenging and fun(cept for RubberBand AI in some NFS games and Split/Seconds later rounds).

Oh noo. Dynamic difficulty is terrible if you are like me and like to set yourself a challenge and keep playing until you rise to that challenge. On the highest difficulties of the God of War games I must have tried some sections about thirty times. The sense of achievement was immense when I succeeded - if it had dialed down the difficulty to I did it in 3 or 4 goes it would have cheapened it greatly.

BTW, in ref to the OP, GoW does actually do something similar in regards to non-regenerating health. If you checkpoint with only a sliver remaining, it will give you slightly more each time you die. I was glad to receive this assistance ;-)

[Squishy]

I have to disagree with your example. Diablo 3's trade-off for not having checkpoints the way other games have is off-set by the randomness of the world every time you enter it. I think for a game like D3 this trade-off is worth it, because you're supposed to play the same quests over and over again. If everything was kept static and you always knew what to expect it would greatly diminish what makes that game stand out. But on the other hand they could maybe retain the randomness but instead of generating the world on join, they could generate the world when you choose a quest. Thereby having checkpoints but still having randomness.

Oh, I didn't realise it was regenerated every time you log in. I guess that makes a little more sense, I just think they could handle it a little better.

[reggie]

I've always thought Beyond Good & Evil's method of text input was incredibly clever, but I've never seen it used anywhere else. It's basically a spiralling radial menu of letters that you roll through with the analogue stick; it's incredibly simple and it works perfectly. I think about it pretty much every time I awkwardly enter text on a virtual keypad with my controller and feel like ending it all.

Agree. Imagine the 360/PS3 dashboards using this. Maybe then it wouldnt be a massive pain to write messages using the controller.

[Tenck]

Insta win like in Earthbound. If we're already higher level than monsters, just let us move on with our lives please.

[Refreshment.01]

Because a few of the things mentioned here are technology driven, I'm going to add another thing that I hope will be adopted more. I love the way looting in Metro 2033 works. You don't go to a dead body and an inventory pops up that you press 'Grab All' on, but rather you have to go to the individual spots on the body where that enemy would have his grenades placed to pick up grenades. You need to check the belt to get his ammo. They are all visible on the model of the enemy and when you pick them up they disappear from the body. This is something that I think only first person games need to bother with (at least the grabbing part, the display part I think should be adopted by all games.)

This is a fantastic touch that im happy to see that other people appreciate.

[Alphahawk]

I really enjoyed EDF 2017's method of handling ammo. For each gun you had unlimited ammo, however each gun had to reload and the better guns had smaller clips/took longer to reload. This let you always feel like a badass although you always were aware of your weapons limitation.

[Rivyn]

I agree with the OP and its whole Max Payne 3 system.

That game does not punish you for dying but actually rewards you because of the fact that you want to keep pushing forward without lowering the difficulty. Call of Duty does it in a horrible way because after a long time of dying on Veteran the game actually asks you if you want to lower the difficulty, and that is simply not the reason why people play on Veteran in the first place. Why not help the player a little by giving just a little more ammo or an opportunity to traverse through another area that will open up after a couple of deaths?

[54-46!]

I'd love to see Active Reload in more games.

[NinjaBoiX]

Optional waypoints ala Dead Space.

Active reload ala Gears of War.

Soft subs (foreign language only) ala Mafia II.

Advanced control options like deadzones and acceleration and such.

[CarbonatedFalcon]

The way Skyrim handles some quests. If you were off adventuring and found a key item early before the quest to retrieve it (or kill it/whatever), the NPCs will compliment you on your foresight and you'll immediately complete the quest. Rather than not being able to actually do whatever it was, and have to backtrack all the way through the dungeon you cleared just to now access the sparkly thing that wasn't interactable before.

[Refreshment.01]

I think this is worth discussing. Games are getting more sophisticated with almost every release and decisions that are adopted by the industry to solve certain issues have new issues arise from that. My first example is Max Payne 3 basically solved an issue with non-regenerating health, that you can end up in a scenario where you're unable to continue because you don't have enough med-packs with you but you keep dying. To get past this point, you would have to restart the whole level over and not use the medpacks you find until the part you were stuck on. What happens is and I don't know if this is the first but it's the first game I noticed it in is that when you keep dying at a checkpoint once, you restart the game as came into it. This is the way check-pointing in games work nowadays.

Other games had done similar things, this falls under the "smart or adaptive difficulty" in games. RE4 did something similar, if you were doing really bad more herbs, health sprays and ammo started appearing.

However, i don't agree with designers having to invest much time creating complex ways to baby sit the player. There's a minimum effort that should be asked from the player to complete a game and the typical varying difficulties levels (easy, normal and hard) serve this purpose quite well when balanced decently.

[StuBurns]

HUD info on the reticule. There are various things you could put on there, Brink had ammo and reloading, which was great.

[Glass Rebel]

I recently found out that the health-packs in Half-Life 2 were dynamic, meaning the better you played the less were hidden in the stashes. It was just so subtle that I never noticed it.

I also love the Max Payne 3 system described in the OP even though I haven't played the game yet. If this was more widely implemented we could go back to the superior healt-pack system in shooters. Even the system Deus Ex: Human Revolution used, with the "health cells", is preferable to completely regenerating health IMO.

Active Reload is an interesting mechanic but I find it terrible when it's put in some corner of the screen, especially on PC. Alien Swarm let you put it above the characters head with some .ini tweaks which made me enjoy it way more, TPS and FPS could put it next to or around the crosshair.

[cjkeats]

I liked the way Infamous 2 said something like "use the right stick to look up" and automatically set whether it was inverted or not based on the way you moved the stick.

[watershed]

I would love it if more platformers adopted VVVVVV's design of instant retry and frequent check points. For me platformers are all about rhythm and speed. I like getting right into the gameplay and any menus and/or design decisions that add a delay between death and respawn hurt my enjoyment of the game.

I'd be happy if more platformers got rid of the game over screen all together. For example I went from playing VVVVVV to Mutant Mudds and while I enjoyed MM I hated having no check points ( I think?) and the time between gaming over and restarting. Especially since MM is hard and requires precise timing.

[Man-is-Obsolete]

I liked the way Infamous 2 said something like "use the right stick to look up" and automatically set whether it was inverted or not based on the way you moved the stick.

Ha that's incredibly clever and such a simple thing.

[Chunky]

Insta win like in Earthbound. If we're already higher level than monsters, just let us move on with our lives please.

The fact this and the weak monsters running away from you thing isn't industry standard frustrates me so much. Dragon Quest 9 kind of did this, but not enough
Even if people enjoy fighting every monster they encounter, just give them an item or spmething that lets them do it.

[Black_Stride]

Oh noo. Dynamic difficulty is terrible if you are like me and like to set yourself a challenge and keep playing until you rise to that challenge. On the highest difficulties of the God of War games I must have tried some sections about thirty times. The sense of achievement was immense when I succeeded - if it had dialed down the difficulty to I did it in 3 or 4 goes it would have cheapened it greatly.

Ok but what if playing God of War on Titan isnt hard enough?
Wouldnt you want it to be Dynamic where if you are still raping Titan Mode, the game ups the difficulty some more.
The way Resident Evil 5 does difficulty is what i think most games could benefit from.....yeah the challenge is good and im not asking them to make all difficulties easy.
But having sub-difficulties that are calculated on the fly would be nice....regardless of whether they go up or down in difficulty.

[Ithil]

I liked the way Infamous 2 said something like "use the right stick to look up" and automatically set whether it was inverted or not based on the way you moved the stick.

That's pretty clever.

[PrinceOfApathy]

The way Skyrim handles some quests. If you were off adventuring and found a key item early before the quest to retrieve it (or kill it/whatever), the NPCs will compliment you on your foresight and you'll immediately complete the quest. Rather than not being able to actually do whatever it was, and have to backtrack all the way through the dungeon you cleared just to now access the sparkly thing that wasn't interactable before.

That has been basically done in every Fallout, Elder Scroll game to date.

In any case. My 5cents, is gamma control in games. It absolutely infuriates me when the sliders are not included. My Bravia is professionally calibrated and I am not messing with my settings, that give me perfect deep black levels to accommodate your stupid game!

[Jintor]

I recently found out that the health-packs in Half-Life 2 were dynamic, meaning the better you played the less were hidden in the stashes. It was just so subtle that I never noticed it.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat

[Blizzard]

Continuous autosaving as seen in, for example, Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. It removes the ability to "cheat" by loading a previous save and doing something else instead. The consequences of you actions are permanent until new game plus. What I hate most in many WRPG's is being able to revert back to a previous save the instant you make a mistake, because there's no risk involved in making the "wrong" choice. Deus Ex in particular I believe would benefit greatly from this. Oh, and Skyrim too, especially Skyrim.

I strongly disagree with this for two reasons.

One, as far as I know, games like Skyrim tend to be known for occasionally having bugs where quests become stuck, NPC's become bugged, and so forth. Not being able to keep multiple save points at different points in time could result in the game game becoming either partially or completely useless. Forcing someone to replay 40 hours of Skyrim because one quest got bugged that they wanted to complete would be horrible.

The answer to that might be "Make giant, but bug-free games", but realistically that is very unlikely (and I say that as a programmer).

The second reason I disagree is that especially in the cases of Skyrim and Deus Ex, they are singleplayer games that seek to offer the player a variety of choice in how they approach the world and their character. In particular with Skyrim, the world is pretty huge and there are a crapton of mods people can choose from. If someone WANTS to cheat, by all means let them do it! There's no multiplayer, and if someone enjoys the game more by adding dragons that you can ride and fire machine guns down at enemies with, then that's great. It doesn't hurt people who want to play the game with one save slot, never reloading past saves, unless those people have horrible self-control and somehow can't resist reloading the save.

[Curufinwe]

That's pretty clever.

Halo did that, or maybe Halo 2.

[PhoenixDawn]

Dynamic/Adaptive Difficulty. Makes every game that much more challenging and fun(cept for RubberBand AI in some NFS games and Split/Seconds later rounds)

While it's not exactly "dynamic difficulty" as you described it, I love the way that Kid Icarus: Uprising handled the whole difficulty adjustment. Having 90 different difficulties in the game really makes it have the potential of having the perfect difficulty for every single player.

[Ambitious]

In Bayonetta, on loading screens you can control the main character in an empty, reddish world, similar to the Assassins Creed series. If you press Select, the game doesn't resume when the loading is finished, so you have as much time as you wish to practice combos and toy around with new weapons.
Too bad that you can't spawn enemies.

[Refreshment.01]

I was going to put full body awareness for first person view games, but i don't know if it qualifies as a small design decision.

However, user adjusted head/weapon bobbing or movement while walking or running. It's really stupid that FPV games have a floating hand as your in game avatar but even more stupid is watching said hand behave like a steady cam.

[-PXG-]

Active Reload is the first thing that comes to mind.

I'd love to see that implemented in more games and explored further. The reload bars for the weapons in Gears of War have varying speeds, accelerations and placements for the "sweet spot". I'd like the variance to be even more distinct. Maybe add a simple QTE (like a context sensitive button press or a stick movement) to emulate the reload animation of that particular weapon. I imagine these reload QTEs (along with the standard active bar) would be something similar to the graffiti tagging in Jet Set Radio (of course in real-time, instead of being locked in stationary animation). The purpose of this aforementioned QTE (again, very simple, nothing too elaborate) would make "perfect" reloads (ie, momentary buffs and bonuses) more difficult, thus, more rewarding when executed correctly.

[Karsticles]

In Bayonetta, on loading screens you can control the main character in an empty, reddish world, similar to the Assassins Creed series. If you press Select, the game doesn't resume when the loading is finished, so you have as much time as you wish to practice combos and toy around with new weapons. Too bad that you can't spawn enemies.

In general, every single game on the planet should give me a little something to do during the loading screen.

Here's mine: I loved it that FFXIII auto-healed me after every battle. Unless you're making a hardcore dungeon crawler, where party survival and resource management is a huge part of the game, I think this should be universal, because it's just a pain in the butt to go through and heal everyone all the time. I thought it was a nice way to remove an aspect of the gameplay that breaks game flow. Chrono Cross also had a good idea in that you could use extra actions to heal at the end of the round.

Also, I think any game that allows crafting should let me sample the crafting somehow. I hate going all the way through to make a weapon only to find out that it has some drawback that isn't mentioned in the details, or I don't like the feel of it. Let me mess around a bit with it.

[Hesemonni]

Option to turn subtitles on / off. Why is it so hard devs?

[Quick]

Option to turn subtitles on / off. Why is it so hard devs?

lol are you serious?

[Refreshment.01]

Another one. If your shooter relies on using cover to progress then please incorporate proper animations for when doing so. It looks retarded to hug a wall and have the gun clipping it or making contact.

[injurai]

I'd love to see Active Reload in more games.

I feel superior to people in TF2 because I manually reload.

[Black_Stride]

Option to turn subtitles on / off. Why is it so hard devs?

Wait What!?......Are there games that dont allow you to turn on/off subtitles???

[Squishy]

The second reason I disagree is that especially in the cases of Skyrim and Deus Ex, they are singleplayer games that seek to offer the player a variety of choice in how they approach the world and their character. In particular with Skyrim, the world is pretty huge and there are a crapton of mods people can choose from. If someone WANTS to cheat, by all means let them do it! There's no multiplayer, and if someone enjoys the game more by adding dragons that you can ride and fire machine guns down at enemies with, then that's great. It doesn't hurt people who want to play the game with one save slot, never reloading past saves, unless those people have horrible self-control and somehow can't resist reloading the save.

Fair enough. And of course, the game would have to be designed around it. Maybe I chose the wrong examples, but I still think it would be great if more games used a similar system. With a PC version you should have every right to cheat if you want to by using mods, console commands, etc. I just think it hurts the experience if you have options like that available. For someone like me who does have horrible self-control like you mentioned, I can't play any game without taking advantage of everything that I can, and that includes reloading saves and using noclip when I encounter something annoying.

[Ichabod]

In Altier Totori you can fast travel to any location within a town via a simple menu. This needs to be in every RPG! Sure its nice taking in the city sights, but sometimes you just want to get and go. Being able to haul ass straight to my desired destination without having to run through X number of screens first was very nice.

[XANDER CAGE]

I think that the Rewind feature in Forza would be better suited to stealth games. It could do away with a lot of frustrating moments, especially for people who like doing no-alert runs (although then I guess it'd introduce a new tier, NO REWIND NO ALERT RUNS~)

[Dragonzord]

the way Saint's Row stores your vehicles and lets you repair them from there, and the way that you're able to have them transported to you in 3.

[Man God]

Resident Evil 4 and 5 both had some amazingly subtle touches in their dynamic difficulty. 5 also shut it off on the highest difficulty level.

The king of difficulty selection is still The World Ends With You. That system would fit marvelously in just about every RPG.

[PsychoWARD23]

Red Dead Redemption's waypoint system, it shows you what path/road you should travel to get to your target. Very helpful.

[Dingotech]

Kingdoms of Amalur did some really basic things with it's UI that I think should be in all RPG's

- You could compare any item you were picking up or buying with what you currently have equiped.
- Any item you picked up that you didn't want you could send to a Junk category in your inventory, then when you get to a vendor you can sell all the Junk with one button press, awesome!
- When you save your game rather than having to wait for the save indicator to finish before you resume, you can hit save then exit the menu and continue to play while the save finishes off in the background. Genius!
- Quest markers for your non-active quests still appear on the game map, so if you're completing your active quest near one you can notice it and finish it off at the same time.

I'm sure I noticed other little things here and there as well that I'm forgetting at the moment.