Game design decisions you'd do differently?

[DarklordKyo]

MGS4

The whole game takes place in and near the war-ravaged Middle Eastern town. There's no globetrotting, no Nomad to pick Snake up when he's tired.

Remove the Drebin shop and currency. You use the guns and items you find and that's it.

More unique bosses, who are actual characters who interact with each other and have their own motivations and flaws. The B&Bs (MGS4) and The Cobras (MGS3) both lacked what Dead Cell (MGS2) and Foxhound (MGS1) had.

Don't try to give scientific explanations for things that didn't need them. The Vamp explanation (nano machines) was dumb. Write original characters instead of finding weak excuses for everyone from the previous games to come back. Especially Big Boss. He should have stayed a corpse. They only brought him back because MGS3 elevated him to god status for people. Also, cut Major Zero and Eva completely from the story. I liked them in MGS3, but they should have been left alone. Major Zero was too insignificant and funny in MGS3 to turn into Big Boss's powerful arch-rival.

Don't overexplain the past. Focus on new ideas.

Raiden returns, but he does not become yet another Gray Fox (tortured cyborg ninja).

Kojima doesn't relent to his staff and Snake does die.

Replace Snake's mustache with a beard.

Don't try to make it so incessantly depressing. It felt awkward because of that.

Cut all the weird live action and CG videos from the beginning of the game to save costs.

An original villain. Ocelot remains an instigator and manipulator, sometimes overtaken by Liquid. I found the arm idea in MGS2 too dumb to make him the main villain. The sequels to MGS1 cheapened Liquid for me.

Did you read these links from the Kojima thread -

http://www.metagearsolid.org/reports_mgs4_longdark.html
http://www.metagearsolid.org/reports_mgs4_soldout_1.html

It's even more depressing to know Kojima didn't even want to make it. Thinking about it now though, it all makes more sense as to why it seemed substandard for him in some ways. His heart wasn't into it.

But then again, apparently MGSV was the game he'd always dreamed of making, and even that was compromised. Almost certainly for different reasons though.

Thanks for the read. Yeah, MGS3 does seem dumbed down. It's a shame the fans were so quick to lambast MGS2. I wonder where the series would be if he had ignored their criticisms.

This is one reason why his new game could be that big missed opportunity.

 

[Yoshi178]

i'd make all the infantry in Halo Wars ACTUALLY useful.

right now the only ones that are actually good for anything are Hunters and ODSTs and ODSTs take forever to build up an army. and even when you do have an Army of ODST's they take literally forever to get anywhere around the map.

also i'd give the Vampires in the game a Tiny bit of a buff so that they do a little bit more damage to ground units than they do at the moment.

 

[CaitSeith]

In Tokyo Jungle, I would make the story mode not to depend on finding collectibles in survival mode to be unlocked (except maybe for the two last chapters), and I would make the animals that you play as in story mode unlockable by completing their chapters. I would still leave some animals unlockable through challenges, but not every one of them.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

GIVE ME AN IN-GAME WAY TO FIND PEOPLE TO PLAY WITH IN DESTINY.

Their whole design philosophy with Destiny was that they wanted you to play with your RL friends. Thing is, they don't realize just how tall of an order that is. If you want to do end-game PvE content, you needed five other friends who own the same system as you, have all bought a copy of Destiny, and have all managed to find a time where they are all available to raid. If any one of those falls through, no raiding and no shiny gear for you. Or, you have to troll the Bungie forums and/or use a third-party website in order to find people to play with. It's a little ridiculous that you have to stop playing the game so that you can keep playing the game, especially when games like WoW have both Raid Finder and LFR.

Seriously, this one issue is easily the biggest thing holding Destiny back, and the devs stubbornly refuse to fix it.

 

[Souplex]

GIVE ME AN IN-GAME WAY TO FIND PEOPLE TO PLAY WITH IN DESTINY.

Heartily seconded.
I would make it so Intelligent Systems never brought back shipping/children in Fire Emblem. While I'm at it I'd make sure the writer they hired was the one who wrote the Radiant Cycle.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

I would make it so Intelligent Systems never brought back shipping/children in Fire Emblem. While I'm at it I'd make sure the writer they hired was the one who wrote the Radiant Cycle.

The whole children thing was nice for the first two times they did it, but at least they had made up decent excuses for it. In Fates, it just felt contrived. I hated it.

The writing still sucks too, because apparently they're starting to cater to the weaboo crowd.

 

[GrumbleGrump]

Oh hey, a new opportunity to rail on BF4's balance!

*Ahem*

Change the handheld AA range, so that it actually behaves like the thing it is, and not the novelty NERF version.
Reduce the number of equipment that the vehicles can carry, making some mutually exclusive (stealth plate cannot go with ECM, for example).
Introduce more weapons that the factions actually use, considering they produce an absolute fuckton of hardware that doesn't get enough attention.
Allow the commander to actually play IN the server alongside people, instead of needing a separate join.
Buff supression effects, in order to make people use the classes that are NOT recon.
Relatedly, make DMRs recon exclusive, so that the class actually retains it's alleged purpose.

Non-BF4 related:

Make poise work in Dark Souls III. By work I mean actually work instead of saying that it works. Those are not the same things, From.
Nerf those goddamn motherfucking Jailers in Irithyll Dungeon.
Make sorcerers a viable class, rather than a horrible waste of time barely worth in PVE and absolutely lost in PVP.

 

[Rangaman]

Bethesda is the easiest pick for me, I cold probably write a book on their bad game decisions. But in short:

-Remove the ugly green filter from Fallout 3.
-Up Skyrim's saturation, make the game world look less 'washed-out'.
-Get rid of Morrowind's godawful combat (I like Morrowind, but the combat in Skyrim is miles better).
-Make the third person mode less horrible to play in.
-Fix the aiming in Fallout 3 and New Vegas.
-Fix Morrowind's hideous quest log.
-Make the map in ANY of your games actually useful.
-Stop giving us 'find-and-collect' quests. Your worlds are far too big for that BS.
-Remove Fallout 4's limited dialogue tree. I don't mind a voiced protagonist, but if they remove player freedom in a game that lives and dies on player freedom, you done goofed.
-Bring back the Karma system.
-Quality over Quantity, not visa versa.

And finally (drumroll please)....the Oblivion issue list:

-Get rid of that awful Boredom Pie minigame.
-Replace the game world with a more interesting one, Cyrodiil is dull as ditchwater compared to both Skyrim and Vvardenfell.
-Hire more than two voice actors.
-Replace the shitty GUI.
-The Arena should be a fun distraction, not a major event.
-Try putting humans in the game world, not animatronics.
-Get rid of that creepy 'Zoom and enhance' thing you do for NPC interactions (this goes for Fallout 3 and New Vegas as well, but this was where it started).
-Why do we have to go to sleep to level up?
-If there was a main plot worth caring about, that would be nice.

There are other problems in other games (Why is Hyrule Field so vast if there's nothing to do?) but Bethesda have a knack for this sort of thing, so yeah.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

I would actually have healing magic in Dragon Age: Inquisition. I can't stand the lack of it.

I would also actually use the Hawke imported from the Dragon Age Keep rather than forcing users to manually recreate her if she deviated at all from the original model. Come to think of it, I don't even think Inquisition's options were as varied or well set out as Dragon Age II's were during Hawke's creation.

Come to think of it, I wouldn't force users to use the Dragon Age Keep. At the very least, I'd give them the option to upload their character files from Origins and DA2 so it doesn't take so long. I also wouldn't hide the "import" option in a side menu to minimize the cases of people playing 5-10 hours before realizing that making changes to the Keep doesn't automatically update the world state that would be imported.

Then I would also fix the tactical camera. Dragon Age: Origins was perfect. Dragon Age II at least worked well with a lack of it. The entire system in Inquisition is just a clunky mess. Either do it like in Origins or just leave it out like in DAII. Stop breaking what already works perfectly.

Also, who decided it was a good idea to force users to hold down the attack button to keep launching a basic attack? RPGs have worked really well by just selecting the enemy and adding input when we need to use special attacks. This just feels unnecessary.

Finally, if we're not going to have healing magic, why the fuck are you limiting the number of healing potions in my pool? Is it too unrealistic to offer unlimited? Then why does it get magically passed around to people across the map? Just let me hold on to however many healing potions come from however much Elfroot I'm willing to invest.

Now, with all that said, I do enjoy Inquisition as a whole. So many decisions, though, just make absolutely no sense. It may not be as bad as The Witcher games, but it's what I'm playing right now, so the problems have been on my mind recently.

Let's just be honest, the design choice which would work best would be for the idiots at Bioware to have just made straight sequels to DA:O using the same setup, vibe, combat etc. and totally ignored their silly idea to try and reinvent the series twice.

DA:I may have successfully sold because of all the hype, but BW won't ever get a penny out of me ever again after DA:2, DA:I & ME:3.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I have another one

FINAL FANTASY VIII​

Spoiler: How I'd fix Draw, Junction and, Character skills

Each Final Fantasy likes to do its own thing and I actually really liked the eighth one despite its many, many flaws. One aspect that I thought was fine on paper but which needs tweaking is the draw/junction system. What I would do would be to keep drawing and junctioning but I would elemental spell use limits and replace it with a traditional MP gauge. Every spell your characters draw will have an individual value that's used to calculate boosts when you junction said spell to an aspect of your character. Regardless of your current MP, that value will be constant. I would base that value off of a dominant stat: for Irvine it would be Speed, Zell would get Strength, Selphie would be Spirit, Rinoa would get Vitality, Squall would get Evade, and Quistis would get Magic.

Spoiler: How I'd improve Guardian Forces

I like the GF system but I'd still like to tweak it a bit. I would still treat GFs as something anybody can equip or remove at will in between combat scenes. I would remove AP and tie GF abilities to their overall levels which would simplify things and might bring in the Pokemon crowd a bit. Furthermore, as each GF levels up their damage output increases more dramatically. I would do this so we can do away with the square-pounding micro game that's attached to summoning GFs. I would still like to have some functionality added to the button combo of select+square but that would be used to skip summoning animations.

Spoiler: How I'd improve the Card Game

When it comes to the card game, I like it in concept but once you get to the point where region rules enter the picture the card game becomes almost unplayable. The thing is, I would keep that in tact but once you enter a new region and learn new rules I would give you the option to activate or deactivate all known rules. To incentivize players to use new rules, I would add new variations to uncommon cards which appear when you play certain people with more rules. The character cards are awesome but I'd love to see boss and character cards with a holofoil variant.

One final thing I'd do is translate Squall's original dialog and implement it into the game. One of the most egregious omissions to Final Fantasy VIII when it was sent to the US was Squall's personality. There are multiple instances wherein Squall will reply to a statement with "..." or just say "..." out of the blue. In the original Japanese version, these were actual lines of dialog. I think he was still considered a 'stoic' character but I would rather have a stoic jerk instead of a mute jerk.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Let's just be honest, the design choice which would work best would be for the idiots at Bioware to have just made straight sequels to DA:O using the same setup, vibe, combat etc. and totally ignored their silly idea to try and reinvent the series twice.

DA:I may have successfully sold because of all the hype, but BW won't ever get a penny out of me ever again after DA:2, DA:I & ME:3.

Personally, I don't mind the idea of making the changes so that each game stands out instead of basically being Origins 1.1, Origins 1.2, etc. I like all three games for different reasons. I also have problems with all three games for different reasons. I was just listing off my complaints with Inquisition (which are probably more than the other two combined), but I do like the game as a whole.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I'd bring back the skill system to Fallout 4, do away with legendary modifications (they make the unique quest rewards feel a lot less special), and make the perks a lot more specialized and unique instead of just "you're now a bit better at doing x" like they mostly are.

Edit: I'd also take out the entire plot surrounding the son as well as the voice acting and limited dialog since it limits your ability to play the character how you want unless you want to get extremely creative with your interpretation of their psyche.