Game mechanics to revive?

[GloatingSwine]

Level music.

I just don't understand FPS developers these days. Most of the new FPS'es on the market, even though most are quite good, have those epic soundtracks, that kick in when the action starts, or when something tragic happens.

In the good old days, in the golden age of FPS, doom, duke nukem 3d, etc. These all had a constant soundtrack throughout the level, and i loved this, because it just immerse me into the game more, then todays music.

Ick, no!

That's alright if the level changes every two minutes, but listening to the same bloody audio loop five, ten, or more times because that's all the storage will allow is utterly unacceptable.

For all the things anyone might criticise it for, that's one of the things Halo, particularly Halo 3, absolutely nails. A musical score that actually feels like a score to the action, not just audio wallpaper. (Halo 3's music is very clever interactive audio, keying different instruments to different points in the game, so that it always syncs to the action, even if the player footles around and stares at rocks for ages or runs straight to the next bit.)

 

[Scypemonk]

Level music.

I just don't understand FPS developers these days. Most of the new FPS'es on the market, even though most are quite good, have those epic soundtracks, that kick in when the action starts, or when something tragic happens.

In the good old days, in the golden age of FPS, doom, duke nukem 3d, etc. These all had a constant soundtrack throughout the level, and i loved this, because it just immerse me into the game more, then todays music.

Ick, no!

That's alright if the level changes every two minutes, but listening to the same bloody audio loop five, ten, or more times because that's all the storage will allow is utterly unacceptable.

For all the things anyone might criticise it for, that's one of the things Halo, particularly Halo 3, absolutely nails. A musical score that actually feels like a score to the action, not just audio wallpaper. (Halo 3's music is very clever interactive audio, keying different instruments to different points in the game, so that it always syncs to the action, even if the player footles around and stares at rocks for ages or runs straight to the next bit.)

In games like Halo, and CoD, its works fine, but i still miss them in more intense, and classicly styled shooters.

 

[Booze Zombie]

The game mechanic I miss most of all, huh? Hitboxes in RPG games, top of the list. At second, I think it's got to be character development, with realistic and varied weapons and attacks in third.

But over all, even the list, I miss true choice... I don't want good or evil, I want to choose to do something.

I killed some guys who did nothing to me... big deal, they were armed, so was I. Loot.

Most of all though, I miss the choice to be an power hungry genius in most games.

E.g: I play as a disgraced millitary commander, with my loyal mercenary soldiers behind me.

We loot an army warehouse and raid a bank, securing our status, we flee to an island to build a secret base and I build an army to try and take over Cuba for use as a foothold for my invasion of America.

I'd pay for that game.

 

[ilves7]

Hmm cool. I've been meaning to play Morrowind..but it's such a slow, time-consuming game, I just don't have time for it anymore. Ah how I wish someone would design a "casual" RPG with all the depth of the classics..

Yea, morrowind is awesome, but its painfully slow at the start because your character walks like he's 105 yrs old. After playing the first time I know to go straight for the Boots of Blinding Speed (it's on a specific character in the game) and cast a couple resist magics before donning them, and then you actually move at a acceptable rate. Normally you would just have to level your speed up, but it takes a while.

 

[Novan Leon]

Here's a few...

1. Merchant AI in games that is reasonably knowledgeable: I hate this instant labeling of stolen goods that RPGs have been doing. Can we bring back the merchants that didn't have a sixth sense at detecting stolen goods?

2. Weighty choices in picking party members: Not just strategically, but politically. Starflight and a few other games touched it in that you really had to be careful who you had traveling with you, since it might irritate the locals. Leading to fun moments like: "You have a WHAT aboard your ship?!" "Uh oh..."

3. Item creation and modification that actually means something: There's been a few systems in games to make stuff. Usually, it's a bunch of crap. Or you just make something to a pre-determined blueprint which equates no more than you facilitating some simple database queries involving decrements and increments.

4. Genuine smartassery: Something that's gone by the wayside, along with story. Planescape Torment is great in this aspect. Nothing beats being a bastard in this game. You can get those mock moments, but the feeling is fleeting. I think Black Isle was one of the few that mastered immersing dynamic dialog trees.

5. Enemies that know when to give up: This has been done in the past to many different degrees, but now most enemies will take the death before failure ideology more often than not... even when it just doesn't fit. What happened to being able to make an example of someone and everyone else chickening out as they failed their morale checks MISERABLY.

Ahh... Starflight. That brings back some great memories. I'm amazed there's still someone around who's played that game.

 

[Kaisharga]

I'd like to see encouragement of inventive implementations for unique abilities, as was seen to some extent in Advent Rising.

Walking on the outer hull of a ship, and you have the levitation power--not only does it work on boxes and rocks, but it works on enemies too. Normally you can use this to hold an enemy in place while you shoot the crap out of 'em with your other hand, or to throw them into their buddies or into a wall or an explosive barrel. But here, on the outside of the ship, you can send him off into the vacuum. Super awesome.

 

[stevesan]

I'm so glad I'm working on one of these in Flash with a friend... I noticed there was a distinct lack of Elite style games around the browser and mainstream game section of the Internet.

Cool - do let us know when the game is done!

This thread on it's own is reminding me of genius ideas I once had that I should capitalise on when I have ten minutes to myself and when I'm not trying to break my fingers on Guitar Hero...

Heh that was part of the motivation for this thread: to put some fresh, not necessarily new, ideas on the table. I say "fresh" instead of "new", because things don't need to be new to seem fresh - as long as you haven't seen it in a while, it's fresh. Thus, "reviving" old game features can be a good way of creating refreshing games.

For example, free-space exploration games. The idea's nothing new, but if someone came out with one right now, I'd be interested because it'd be like nothing else on the market _right now_. It's nothing new, thanks to Elite and Star Control 2, but it would still be _fresh_ and catch my attention in the flood of FPS's in the industry right now.

Irrational pulled this off with BioShock. None of the major ideas in BioShock were new, and in fact, they were done much better in older games. But those ideas helped BioShock stand out because a) they hadn't been done in a while, and b) recent games that did do them recently (like Deus Ex) didn't have much mainstream success.

 

[stevesan]

Level music.

I just don't understand FPS developers these days. Most of the new FPS'es on the market, even though most are quite good, have those epic soundtracks, that kick in when the action starts, or when something tragic happens.

In the good old days, in the golden age of FPS, doom, duke nukem 3d, etc. These all had a constant soundtrack throughout the level, and i loved this, because it just immerse me into the game more, then todays music.

Games like F.E.A.R., weren't scary to me, because you knew when something was going to happen, while doom still makes me jump, no mather how many times i play it, even though i know were all the monsters are on all the levels, and difficulties.

Even sequels to those briliant games, like quake 4, and prey, while being decent games, just doesn't live up to their preceders (prey more as a spiritual preceder). I downloaded a music mod for quake 4, that changed the trumpet/classic soundtrack, with some good oldfashioned industrial music, and even though it still only kicked in during the high action points, it helped alot.

So in short, please bring back the episodes with levels structure, and levelbasedc music, that made the FPS genre so popular to start with, all you developers, especialy you iD.

Wow I thought I was pretty alone on this, but I completely agree with you. You vocalized my thoughts exactly.

It's like chapters in a book. I'm no literary theorist, but the chapter structure clearly has some value - it's still used to this day in modern novels. When FPS's first started getting rid of this structure, I thought it was good thing - I figured, it was more realistic to not have artificial level delineations, and thus cooler! But now, I honestly miss it. Can't quite explain why..but there's just something valuable about referring to levels by numbers. E1m7, E2m1...yeh, you know what I'm talking about

And yes, the music - I'll take an awesome looping SONG over "dynamic music" (read: crappy beats that are awkwardly cued) any day. Hell, these days I just listen to a CD while playing most games. Doom and Duke3D had killer tracks - Bobby Prince needs to get back into it!

 

[stevesan]

But over all, even the list, I miss true choice... I don't want good or evil, I want to choose to do something.

I killed some guys who did nothing to me... big deal, they were armed, so was I. Loot.

Most of all though, I miss the choice to be an power hungry genius in most games.

E.g: I play as a disgraced millitary commander, with my loyal mercenary soldiers behind me.

We loot an army warehouse and raid a bank, securing our status, we flee to an island to build a secret base and I build an army to try and take over Cuba for use as a foothold for my invasion of America.

I'd pay for that game.

Was there a past game that accomplished this? Cuz I'd love to see how it pulled that off.

 

[Booze Zombie]

To an extent, City of Villains' Master Mind archetype has done this... yet it hasn't, as well.

Anyway, to anwser your question... no, not really. I was giving an example that could exist in a minion control style game.

 

[KaynSlamdyke]

Cool - do let us know when the game is done!

Soon as I feel a bit more welcome around here I'll more than willingly shout and rant about the various Flash projects I'm involved with. I'm not here to get legions of people to click the high-voting scores on my Newgrounds submissions at the moment, more just to rant about my thoughts on the games industry and to remind myself to listen to Yahtzee's rants every Wednesday.

The programmer (because in a wierd role reversal, I'm doing the art for a change) currently has a very rudimentary Drug Wars clone, and wants the game done before 2008. Me in it for the long haul wants something a bit more... complicated. I'll keep you posted...

It's like chapters in a book. I'm no literary theorist, but the chapter structure clearly has some value - it's still used to this day in modern novels. When FPS's first started getting rid of this structure, I thought it was good thing - I figured, it was more realistic to not have artificial level delineations, and thus cooler! But now, I honestly miss it. Can't quite explain why..but there's just something valuable about referring to levels by numbers. E1m7, E2m1...yeh, you know what I'm talking about

Oh Doom music... we loved you so.
We loved you for your adrenaline pumping moments, for your fear enriching silences, for the sole ability to enhance the shock value already present through a midi channel alone...

Yeah. Identifiable level music helps keep pace. I think I'd prefer all MMO's much more if the music felt a lot more immersive - every entrance to a city in WoW or district in CoH felt like it would really get going and play as a deep immersive soundtrack, and then either died completely or faded into inaudable ambience. Bring back location music - I can always mute it if I decide iTunes was better, but please give me an option to hear something amazing.

 

[shadow skill]

Here is another one, quality control.

 

[woodchunkz]

1) Toung-in-cheek humor. A lot of games today take themselves far too seriously (stares at Clive Barker's Jericho)

2) The Konami code. Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start.

3) The Spread gun. 'nuff said.

 

[Kaisharga]

That's a good point. Special input codes before starting a game were great, letting you play with a certain 'handicap' that you could cast aside when you felt confident enough in your ability to play the game legit. Kind of an alternate idea to the concept of difficulty settings.

 

[MrInsecure]

I really wish a game would create true moral choice with multiple outcomes (and real in-game consequences) depending on how you act and what you say. Fable was supposed to have done this but failed because they only had a good-evil scale (the same goes with KOTOR).

The Megami Tensei series (especially Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, which had six different possible endings based on your choices) comes a lot closer than most, but in the end it still relies mainly on special "flag" events to trigger the outcome. It would be nice if people had more than good and evil, but also a law-chaos scale, or some kind of selfishness-altruism scale, or maybe even a sane-psychotic scale on which to be measured (this last one would be awesome because a psychotic ending could consist of reality itself twisting into your madness).

Speaking of psychotics, Eternal Darkness' madness mechanic needs to be seen elsewhere. I have never played a game before or since that could so incredibly portray insanity in gameplay. Sure a bunch of heroes have "gone insane," but when is the last time your game pretended to shut off in the middle of a level, only to come back on a couple of seconds later as you reach for the reset button?

P.S. Many people talk about lots of old ways of doing things like the ATB system and single ambient tracks for FPS levels, but before you go espousing such things try and consider what it would be like to implement such things in a modern game. Go back and play those old games (if you can) and then tell us how far superior they really are. Nostalgia is very powerful and you may find yourself reminded of a lot of old annoyances you forgot about.

 

[Count_de_Monet]

Star Ocean 2 (the Playstation 1 game) had a fairly complex and useful item creation system. I'd love to see that brought back.

I'd like to see a mixture of third person movement like newer RPG's (FFX, Star Ocean) but with an classic encounter system (Most of the Final Fantasy games) except a battle environment like Star Ocean 2 where you just run around and pummel things. I'm not a fan of fighting your enemies as you walk around like Zelda and I'm tired of turn based/timed combat where you have very little control over your character.

I like that style of play and I'm tired of an MMORPG/Oblivion type of fighting in RPG's.

 

[Divinegon]

I somewhat miss games that are short but offer multiple paths and endings. In fact, can't recall one like that since Darius Gaiden, the 2D shooter for the Sega Saturn. And I kept playing those paths and endings over and over again because they were fun and awesome as hell, specially on each last level, with actually enjoyable ending sequences.

Nowadays every game that involves multiple endings either involves a decision at the finale of the game or is actually affected by what you do through out the game but is too long for me to feel like playing it again.

 

[KaynSlamdyke]

Speaking of psychotics, Eternal Darkness' madness mechanic needs to be seen elsewhere. I have never played a game before or since that could so incredibly portray insanity in gameplay. Sure a bunch of heroes have "gone insane," but when is the last time your game pretended to shut off in the middle of a level, only to come back on a couple of seconds later as you reach for the reset button?

Never, since that specific idea is a patented one owned by Nintendo.
Seriously. Insanity in an interactive computer game (using a sanity meter and hallucinative audio, visual and interactive effects) is patented. (US Patent #6935954)

Unless we count the poor one Indigo Prophecy / Farenheit tried.

 

[Xen Monkey]

Bigger boxes....



... I'm not sure why, but certain people seem to think a bigger box makes a game better (as in the old style boxes)

*shrugs*