What would you uninvent about modern games?

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

orubiru

Oh, I dunno. All of it?

The backlash over the ending of Mass Effect 3 was a low point as far as I am concerned. There is WAAAAY to much entitlement within the gaming community. Not saying the ending was good just, who really cares right? It was a great game and the end was pretty logical to be honest. It was a pretty derivative story to begin with.

Boards is quite good actually but when you go to other sites you just get the impression that the people playing games these days are so whiny, snarky and miserable.

Anyone remember the days of looking at rows and rows of cassette tapes trying to figure out what game to get? Firing that thing up and listening to it load for 30 minutes before discovering if you've just purchased a turd or a diamond? Remember just having a good time either way?

Urgh. The whole "are video games art" conversation. Shut up already. Someone writes a game about cancer or depression or some other boring crap and it's two sides going to war over whether or not its art or a game. Nobody cares. Side A, if this is the kind of thing you like then buy it, have fun, write your blogs. Side B, if you'd rather play a shoot em up or a platformer then take your pick and enjoy your evening.

A "concept" game about depression or identity or cancer or whatever is art. It might not be good art but it is still art.
You don't think Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto are art? Aw, you are an idiot too.

If you think that Telltale Games "aren't really games" then that's fine, no need to buy. There have been "text adventure" games since the days of Spectrum and Commodore 64. They are games. They are art.

I'd uninvent bickering over games with folks online. Then I'd reinvent talking about games with your friends.

Folks need to give developers time and space to make whatever they want to make. Leave them alone and let them make games!

Don't like the trailers, or the picture on the box, or the write ups from "journalists" then don't buy the thing. Jeez.

orubiru

Dardania wrote: »

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

I'd like to see them try to dial it back a bit on storytelling too.

Most games these days have an awful script with awful voice acting.

99% of the time they just don't have the writing ability to make anything better than "just OK".

Bayonetta, for example, is a magnificent game with an absolutely atrocious story and even worse voice acting. If they stripped all of that away and left you with just the game and maybe a little bit of text introduction before each chapter (no more than a paragraph) then I reckon you've got a near perfect game there. Decent difficulty curve, amazing graphics, great controls, loads of challenge, loads of action.

I'd rather see them move away from "cinematic". Looking at trailers for Uncharted 4 or Quantum Break and they just seem like mediocre Hollywood blockbusters.

Anyone else prefer good old fashioned dialogue boxes to voice acting? Or am I just a grumpy old man?

Stone Deaf 4evr

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

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

And Dirt Rally, a game that has lit a fire in me that was extinguished at colin mc rae 3.

Maximus Alexander

Stone Deaf 4evr wrote: »

And Dirt Rally, a game that has lit a fire in me that was extinguished at colin mc rae 3.

I haven't played it yet but I've heard super things. A friend has a racing seat and a wheel, must try it out

Retr0gamer

Batman Arkham combat system. In a world where Platinum games exist there should be no excuse for such atrocious combat systems. The Batman games get a pass because it doesn't just rely on the melee combat and the other systems are great. Games that rely totally on Arkham combat such as Mad Max and Shadow of Mordor I just don't get. The combat is just awful. You are just mashing buttons in time with visual cues.

Vicxas

Season pass'
DLC
QTE's

I remember the outrage that proceeded the Oblivion Horse Armour, and the murder that caused. But DLC just crept in and stayed, and I hate DLC. Feels like money grabbing from the Dev's.

mahoganygas

Retr0gamer wrote: »

You are just mashing buttons in time with visual cues.

I just had a funny thought.

Some of my fondest childhood gaming memories revolve around mashing buttons to visual cues in street fighter 2.

Now it bugs me when a game expects me to do it.

Retr0gamer

mahoganygas wrote: »

I just had a funny thought.

Some of my fondest childhood gaming memories revolve around mashing buttons to visual cues in street fighter 2.

Now it bugs me when a game expects me to do it.

There's reading animation frames visual cues and then there's big dumb flashing visual cues that have massive input windows and are colour coded to what button to press. There's also positioning to take into account, Arkham combat games just teleport you to the next enemy. It's basically combat devolved into a QTE.

Stone Deaf 4evr

Retr0gamer wrote: »

There's reading animation frames visual cues and then there's big dumb flashing visual cues that have massive input windows and are colour coded to what button to press. There's also positioning to take into account, Arkham combat games just teleport you to the next enemy. It's basically combat devolved into a QTE.

Yeah, batman combat is cool looking, but its almost like a rhythm game more than a brawler. Shadow of Mordor has it as well and I think thats why I wasn't so hot on that game as everyone else.

briany

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 is almost all of modern gaming, though. The Mario thing is just a particularly bad example of it. Dying means very little in a game any more and most games one can complete if they're simply willing to stick it out on a hard section. No going back to the very start if you die 3 times.