What would you uninvent about modern games?

um7y1h83ge06nx

Thought I'd start a boards thread by robbing an idea from an Eurogamer article over the weekend:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-04-03-what-would-you-uninvent-about-modern-games

The world of games is filled with wonderful inventions, but what would you choose to uninvent?

I would un-invent games broken on release and an over reliance on collectibles to pad out games.

I finished everything in Arkham Knight except for the Riddler trophies

and by extension capturing Riddler

and doubt I ever will. I collected about 40 of the 243 I think. To collect the rest would be incredibly monotonous, I'd much rather spend that time playing the more interesting bits of another game on my backlog mountain. Back when I was a child I loved things like that to get more out of a game, but with more disposable income now we can afford to ignore these things.

me_irl

QTE's.

Generic Dreadhead

Treating players like they are special little snowflakes and everyone is a winner.

In Mario 3D World on Wii U if you die like 4 times it basically gives you "invincible mode" so you can finish the level,

F**k right off you molly coddled f**ks :pac:

ripperman

Open world being a panacea for game design.

The_Valeyard

DLC

Just release all the f*cking game and stop charging for content that should have been playable in the first place!

um7y1h83ge06nx

The_Valeyard wrote: »

DLC

Just release all the f*cking game and stop charging for content that should have been playable in the first place!

There was an interesting view in the comments section of that article that a good thing would be to remove online connectivity from consoles.

Although it would remove the possibility of digital games and online gaming it would solve the DLC and games being broken on launch issues. A game would need to be fully finished before release.

ShadowHearth

DLC removed and Expansions brought back in. Looking at how great Blizzard did it and still does.

"Learn how to play game" intro levels. Really hate those and makes me feel like their wasting my time before letting me play actual game. Make games, which make me learn while I play it. Its old video, but ego raptor nailed it: Teach player through its level design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM

Maximus Alexander

Can I have two?

• The entire concept of F2P or micro-transactions.
• DLC or season passes.

Shiminay

Yearly releases. You can't build a good game in a year.

Zillah

MMOs, or at the very least what they've done to non-MMO games. The way so many people take healer/tank/dps for granted as the obvious and only way to handle characters. Any sort of grinding.

KT10

Teamspeak, or basically being able to talk to other players automatically.

You jump into a session of GTA online and all I seem to hear are 12 year olds hurling racial abuse at each other in an attempt to appear 'adult'

Annoying little ****tards.

Mickeroo

Pointless collectibles in pretty much every game.

Nody

Cover based shooters (ala locking to a cover ala Tom Clancy, ME2 etc.); if you want to use a cover it should be free style instead of some magic lock on cover.

Sieghardt

open world checklist design aka "ubisoft game"

Ri_Nollaig

The_Valeyard wrote: »

DLC

Just release all the f*cking game and stop charging for content that should have been playable in the first place!

...some DLC
alright, most

But the DLC for Witcher 3 for example is very good and would easily stand on its own as expansion pack back in the day. Likewise I loved the DLC in Fallout New Vegas.

But yeah, I agree most DLC is not great at all and clearly just content they probably could have put into the main game anyway.
The Fallout 4 DLC is springing to mind, I am hoping the second one will make me not regret getting the season pass.

Maximus Alexander

Mickeroo wrote: »

Pointless collectibles in pretty much every game.

This is something I liked in The Division. There were collectables, but you actually got something out of it, a phone call, audio log or photo that gave you some background on the world. I was actually motivated to collect some of them. I wish more games would take that approach if they must do collectables.

The_Captain

Roy Harsh Beneath wrote: »

There was an interesting view in the comments section of that article that a good thing would be to remove online connectivity from consoles.

Although it would remove the possibility of digital games and online gaming it would solve the DLC and games being broken on launch issues. A game would need to be fully finished before release.

No, games would be released unfinished and that'd be it. Bugs would never be fixed, any new ideas wouldn't be able to be implemented. Content would be released as a separate disc expansion pack.

Imagine Skyrim if the day one version of the game was the only one you'd ever get to play

Maximus Alexander

The_Captain wrote: »

No, games would be released unfinished and that'd be it. Bugs would never be fixed, any new ideas wouldn't be able to be implemented. Content would be released as a separate disc expansion pack.

Imagine Skyrim if the day one version of the game was the only one you'd ever get to play

Are you fairly young? Because this is not how it used to work. Prior to patches, games on consoles were generally released fully finished, well polished and without game-breaking bugs. There would have been exceptions, but their sales just tanked and were a harsh lesson to publishers. These days the stuff they get away with would make your eyes water.

PC always had issues, because it was always possible to pop a patch on a disk and distribute it with a magazine or whatever, but even then it was nothing like it is today.

um7y1h83ge06nx

Yeah, I have no doubt if we reverted to that initially some games would be shipped unfinished but the market would resolve that as those games would tank in sales and the developer would be forced to up their game.

Would probably cause less games to be released but with higher quality.

Dardania

Roy Harsh Beneath wrote: »

Would probably cause less games to be released but with higher quality.

No bad thing

Digital Solitude

I'd get rid of auto healing like in Uncharted. Get shot? Hide for a few seconds until you're okay

gizmo

ShadowHearth wrote: »

DLC removed and Expansions brought back in. Looking at how great Blizzard did it and still does.

Pretty much this. DLC would and could not disappear. It'd just be collated into a larger scale expansion that would be sold at a later date and at a higher price point than the piecemeal content we expect today.

Personally I'd be in favour of this at least, I like to get invested in additional content rather than dipping in and out of the same release over a couple of months.

Shiminay wrote: »

Yearly releases. You can't build a good game in a year.

Yearly releases are rarely, if ever, built in a year. They're generally worked on by multiple teams either within the same studio or across different studios.

pasta-solo

Cormac... wrote: »

Treating players like they are special little snowflakes and everyone is a winner.

In Mario 3D World on Wii U if you die like 4 times it basically gives you "invincible mode" so you can finish the level,

F**k right off you molly coddled f**ks :pac:

That's optional in Mario 3D World, and it gives players the opportunity to progress if they'e struggling, surely a good thing?

For me, it'd be unnecessary padding. In my mind, I have no issue with a good short game as opposed to a long, boring game.

pablomakaveli

Get rid of FTP/PTW/microtransaction bull****. Its a cancer on the gaming industry.

um7y1h83ge06nx

Dardania wrote: »

No bad thing

Not at all.

Links234

KT10 wrote: »

Teamspeak, or basically being able to talk to other players automatically.

You jump into a session of GTA online and all I seem to hear are 12 year olds hurling racial abuse at each other in an attempt to appear 'adult'

Annoying little ****tards.

Yeah, this to me is the worst aspect of gaming in general. I can think of no bugs I've encountered, no problem mechanics, or even outright bad games, that have ever been close to the bad experiences I've had with multiplayer games, be that assholes, griefers or hackers.

Hell is other gamers.

Penn

Always online. Must be always online. You're not signed in. You're still not signed in. Cannot connect to network. You must sign in to use this feature. Sign in. Sign the f*ck in. Thou must joineth us in our online world! SIGN IN! SIGN THE F*CK IN!

I just want to play the f*cking games without constantly being asked to be signed in or connected to servers etc.

mickoneill31

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

Are you fairly young? Because this is not how it used to work. Prior to patches, games on consoles were generally released fully finished, well polished and without game-breaking bugs. There would have been exceptions, but their sales just tanked and were a harsh lesson to publishers. These days the stuff they get away with would make your eyes water.

Doesn't even need to be fairly young. I've an Xbox One, having had an original Xbox and 360.

I got Halo5 before Christmas. Wanted to throw it on for a few minutes to try it out.

Turn on Xbox.
Your Xbox needs a few gig patch before you can install this game. Wait 30 minutes while this is done.
Install game. What's this install ****e. Games should just play on consoles. Wait another 40 minutes.
Play game. Your game needs a few gig patch before you can play this game. Feeeeeeck.

After all that the game was average.

mickoneill31

I'd uninvent non split screen games.

I used to play games on the old consoles with 4 players on the same console with each player getting a quarter of a screen or 2 players on split screen.

Now with the most powerful consoles ever and more megapixels on my TV than I can shake a stick at I can only play 1 player to a box on games like Halo 5 or Need For Speed 6000. I remember the old Burnout games. We had some great times with that games with a few people over and a few beers. Now you can sit looking at me play for a few minutes before it's your turn. NOT.

5rtytry56

Be HONEST with the gamer and not dumb a game down as stealthily you can: The Sims is a case in point here. Sims 3 started out as a funny spicey game to immerse in. Then by degrees, EA dumbed it down so that...
you could'nt have kids by The Grim Reaper. And in Sims 4 you can't have swimming pools....because in the Sims 3, players were using swimming pool in testing to see how long their sims would last against each other. And there are no toddlers in Sims 4. Do I buy the official explanation that toddlers were too complex to code...?.....?....really?

Partially removing control from the player during game-play to forcefully get the player to notice something without it happening naturally

Oh good thread OP btw

Retr0gamer

****ty tutorial levels that last forever. The ones that tell you inane **** like how to move forward and look around. Halo was lauded with praise for its tutorial level and ever since it's been copied by developers, except copied incompetently. That level was fun to play through and the looking around bit wasn't to tell the player how to use a joypad, it was there to figure out if the player used inverted look.

Also Farcry Blood Dragon doesn't get a pass on this for making fun of it. It's tutorial is still a load of arse no matter how much the protagonist is self aware of it.

Also I'd like games to be more confident and not worry about losing players within the first 30 minutes of a game. I'm playing Trails in the Sky at the moment and it takes ages to get going but it also does a great job of world building. It's the same with Half Life 1 and 2. Games today have to start with some big epic moment to try and reel in players so much so it's actually gotten boring now.

Maximus Alexander

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Also I'd like games to be more confident and not worry about losing players within the first 30 minutes of a game. I'm playing Trails in the Sky at the moment and it takes ages to get going but it also does a great job of world building. It's the same with Half Life 1 and 2. Games today have to start with some big epic moment to try and reel in players so much so it's actually gotten boring now.

Totally agree with this. There seem to be no slow build ups or scene setting anymore and it's a damn shame.

Thinking back to things like the tram sequence in HL1, it completely set the scene for the rest of the game and even long after it's over the entire atmosphere of the world is enhanced for it having happened. If that game had started at the moment of the resonance cascade, I don't think it would have gotten the hooks into people in quite the same way.

Retr0gamer

Nody wrote: »

Cover based shooters (ala locking to a cover ala Tom Clancy, ME2 etc.); if you want to use a cover it should be free style instead of some magic lock on cover.

_CreeD_

First Person Shooters designed for console control play....They shouldn't mix.

Stone Deaf 4evr

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

This is something I liked in The Division. There were collectables, but you actually got something out of it, a phone call, audio log or photo that gave you some background on the world. I was actually motivated to collect some of them. I wish more games would take that approach if they must do collectables.

TBH, I think these are just a lazy way of fleshing out the game world. I shouldn't have to trawl through your gigantic world map looking for 50 doodahs just so I can piece together some back story on an antagonist etc. I've loads left to collect an TBH I dunno If I could be bothered.

Also - for the love of sweet baby jebus, stop tying achievements to collecting these yolks. far cry 4 actually pulled a pretty good move in this front - you only had to collect about 20% of em to get the related achievements.

Stone Deaf 4evr

If my character can't backflip over a stack of barrels while dual wielding ak47's , don't show me cutscenes where they do that very same thing.

Maximus Alexander

Stone Deaf 4evr wrote: »

TBH, I think these are just a lazy way of fleshing out the game world. I shouldn't have to trawl through your gigantic world map looking for 50 doodahs just so I can piece together some back story on an antagonist etc. I've loads left to collect an TBH I dunno If I could be bothered.

I can see that perspective too and that's fair enough. To my mind though, in The Division you got the plot and a good sense of the world anyway and these were just an optional extra that added a bit of flavour. I found it to be a damn sight better than the usual "Hidden packages", "Relics" or "Treasures" that are just a box ticking exercise and offer you nothing in return.

TetraxShard

Definitely the collectibles. Especially Riddler Trophies. Locking the best ending in Arkham Knight to getting all 200+ of them, nonsense.

Toys-to-life as well. I like some collectible stuff, I like video games, I should not need the former to play the latter. Hate that the best Marvel game on the market that isn't Marvel Heroes 2016 is Disney Infinity. I'd love to play Lego Dimensions as well just because of the variety of licenses, but the sets are crazy money and I generally love Lego.

steve_r

It's kinda the same as collectibles but I've a particular dislike of "achievements".

The principle goal should be beating the game, not "Defeating x types of enemies" or "used all combat techniques".

Like with collectibles, it's an attempt to make the game seem fuller than it actually is.

Also Telltale "games" that aren't games, and releasing games on an episode basis that then get delayed.

SeantheMan

-Season Passes
-Stupid tutorial levels (press A to move forward etc, use your mouse to look around)
-The constant flashing 'NEW' when you get a new item or unlock something, that flashes until you look at it
-UPlay
-Certain DLC , specifically withholding content on release
-FPS locked at 30

Duggy747

Absolutely micotransactions, killed a favourite series of mine (Payday) stone dead with their blatant greed.

Early-access, though, for me. A plague on gaming where too many games have petered out or are stuck in an insanely slow development cycle (hello, DayZ) that by the time they're done, the novelty and player-base will have long moved on. There's only been a tiny amount of exceptions to this model which has been abused to death.

Generic Dreadhead

pasta-solo wrote: »

That's optional in Mario 3D World, and it gives players the opportunity to progress if they'e struggling, surely a good thing

It's actually more of a Meta thing with me in that it encourages the wrong type of behaviours in younger gamers. It promotes instant gratification, makes everyone feel like they are entitled to finish every game etc etc.

It's just me a grumpy mo-fo cause I just find the way people look at games when they are 35, 25 and 15 to be drastically different.

Back in my day, you got 3 lives and you learned to play the game :pac:

um7y1h83ge06nx

I agree but arguably most games these days are too easy. I play most modern games on hard and they're usually not very challenging.

When I go back to retro games these days it's a huge shock to the system, and I'm 33 now, and had a SNES back in the day, so it wouldn't be my first time around playing them. I have just how forgotten hard they are.

Easy modern games actually makes me reluctant to tackle titles like the Dark Souls series and Bloodbourne, I really should.

Zillah

Duggy747 wrote: »

Early-access, though, for me.

Oh God yes. I find it insulting.

Would you like to pay us money so you can be a beta tester for our piece-of-shit unfinished crapware, and thereby ruin any experience you were ever going to have of it? Now that we have an income stream we feel no pressure to set a launch date or release a finished product; instead we are going to perform slow and irregular updates while we suckle endlessly at the meagre but consistent trickle of cash from early access sales. Ten years from now we'll dissolve our company and start again.

Mal-Adjusted

I actually like Early-Access as a concept, but how many games actually came out of it for a full launch?

Anyway, keeping with the trend of hating on modern gaming, anything that's server dependent. Whether I pay €23 for Depth or €60 for Evolve i don't want my purchase to be made worthless because the publisher doesn't feel like they got enough sales. Either give the community the ability to host servers or even play offline against bots. This goes double for single player games that demand an always online connection. >:(

Maximus Alexander

Kerbal Space Program alone is enough to justify the existence of Early Access.

Shiminay

KSP, Prison Architect and Minecraft are the rare exceptions that prove Early Access can work (yes, there are more and no, Minecraft wasn't technically in EA but it was the game that proved the model could work).

The whole survival crafting PvP genre seems to live in a permanent state of Early Access and nothing ever gets finished which is why I don't wanna buy any of those games (Rust, DayZ, H1Z1, The Culling, etc).

Multiplayer games that are about to expire should do the decent thing and release the server EXE for public use.

Links234

I can think of plenty of great Early Access games, two absolute standouts for me were Darkest Dungeon and Besiege, and there's been plenty of other games that were in early access that I thoroughly enjoyed, such as The Red Solstice, Wasteland 2, Invisible Inc. and Satellite Reign, and probably loads more. There's also quite a few that I've not yet played, such as Grim Dawn or Divinity: Original Sin that I want to get, or ones that while I'm not too interested in, loads of people raved about, like The Escapists, Broforce, or Project Zomboid. Early Access gets a bad reputation, but there are plenty of amazing games that went through Early Access, there's probably loads more I could mention.

It's like how people seem to love to rag on Kickstarter, but some of my absolute favourite games in recent years were crowdfunded, FTL, Undertale, Hard West, and a lot of the above mentioned Early Access games too, like Darkest Dungeon, started out on Kickstarter. Most recently I've been enjoying Hyper Light Drifter, yet another Kickstarter game.

I think crowdfunding and early access continue to produce a hell of a lot of quality, even if there's a lot of garbage as well.

Dardania

My suggestion is roll back processing power (specifically graphics) - too many games focus on visual quality, whilst forgetting playability. Look at quake 3 arena - crude graphics but the games play is fast paced and fun

Last of us gets a pass on this

degrassinoel

Shiminay wrote: »

Multiplayer games that are about to expire should do the decent thing and release the server EXE for public use.

just found out recently that the warhammer mmo went offline in 2013 no singleplayer at all