Gameplay mechanics that are awesome, but sadly left out in future games

[JohnReaper]

sometimes, Mechanics just are so awesome but only appear once in any game,

My personal favorite would have to be, Shadowrun's (Sega genesis) Runner system, Instead of having set party members, you have a limited number of people to "hire" for long term or short, its up to you, Long term was 10X higher than short term which was just a single mission, now this is the catch, if a mission goes well, the character leaves, and you have to hire them again, this time for a lower price,

doesn't sound like much, Unless you add in each runner has its own str and weaknesses. and as such certin jobs were better with a ceartain team, SO it was this, Pay the extra cash to have them for good and work on them all through the game, or work mission wise,

sadly I don't see any rpgs with a choice like this any more,

What mechanics do you remember that arnt in many if more than one game.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Leaning needs to come back to FPS games. The FPS control scheme is so basic and simple, there was no reason to take leaning out.

Any beat'em up (hack n' slash) game without dodge offsetting (from Bayonetta) feels behind the times. I guess games that stress blocking instead can implement block offsetting.

 

[The Madman]

First Person stealth elements ala Thief series. For a time many developers tried to copy it (and mostly failed) but now the concept seems to have largely gone the way of the dodo! Pity because I found that a well implemented stealth system from the first person perspective is much, much more atmospheric than the typical third-person perspective taken for these sorts of games.

Plus it's been years since the last Thief game, which itself was a bit of a step down from the games which came before it, I needs my stealth fix and these wannabe stealth games out there just don't cut it for someone who cut their teeth on the Thief franchise.

 

[Simon Pettersson]

Leaning needs to come back to FPS games. The FPS control scheme is so basic and simple, there was no reason to take leaning out.

Any beat'em up (hack n' slash) game without dodge offsetting (from Bayonetta) feels behind the times. I guess games that stress blocking instead can implement block offsetting.

Leaning is back in COD Black Ops at least for PC.

But yeah there need to be more leaning in FPS!

 

[Manoose47]

not sure if it qualifies as a mechanic per se, but im dreadfully sick of all the "violence control" in modern R.P.G's e.g. in games like baldurs gate 1 & 2 you could acxt like a complete psychotic and literally attack everything in the game, whether it made sense or not, it was always an option, same goes for worrowind, you could kill just about everyone, even breaking the game in the process, the point being, that it let YOU decide; which is pretty much the entire point of R.P.G's.

Another thin i want brought back is death status in party based prgs, whats with all this unconscious bullshit! when a characters health is gone in every modern pbrpg they simply fall unconcious until healed, although people dont want to have to ressurect their party memebers or go throught that hassle, knowing your party members aren;t immortal adds extra value to them; you actually have to look after ur mages! the reason i sited these two issues is because they totally break immersion... like when i trigger a trap in dragon age that blows up an entire room, and yet it only knocks my character out.

 

[The Madman]

...in games like baldurs gate 1 & 2 you could acxt like a complete psychotic and literally attack everything in the game, whether it made sense or not, it was always an option...

Heh, in Baldur's Gate if you killed a character with plot essential dialogue there was actually a built in failsafe to allow the players to continue playing the game regardless, 'Biff the Understudy' who would appear, say the dead characters plot-necessarily lines of dialogue, then vanish in all his 3rd wall breaking glory!

Good times!

 

[Danceofmasks]

Hardcore mode (i.e. death is permanent) as a game feature.
As in games that don't support reloading (you can save and resume, though).

The most notable examples of these are roguelikes and (old) adventure games.

I'm especially impressed by the games that give you a fully fleshed out synopsis of everything you did (and how well you did them).


Although, I guess that kind of thing still exists in scoreattack type games ...

 

[L33tKyuubi]

A lot of mechanics in EarthBound.

For example, the auto-kill feature if you're at a high enough level. And how enemies avoid you if you're also at a high enough level.

Also, there's a feature in Pokemon Platinum that I haven't seen in the other games I've played, and that's how you when you simply see pokemon, they're automatically added to your pokedex. In other games you have to actually catch them to add them to your pokedex. That's what makes my Platinum my favorite out of all of them so far.

 

[Ranchcroutons]

I really miss map and mission editors on consoles...sigh. Far Cry lets you make the maps but you cant populate them with NPCs like in Time Splitters.

 

[Dexiro]

The brush from Okami. One of the most unique and non-repetitive magic systems ever. Surprised that there hasn't even been a variation on it in another adventure game/RPG.

I'm sure quite a few games have a similar magic system, it basically just involves drawing gestures on the screen with your mouse to do different spells. Couldn't name any but I've seen atleast one on Steam.

Oh there is that Sorcery game on PS3 that uses the move controller.

 

[blind_dead_mcjones]

the '6 degrees of freedom' movement in descent

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Leaning needs to come back to FPS games. The FPS control scheme is so basic and simple, there was no reason to take leaning out.

Any beat'em up (hack n' slash) game without dodge offsetting (from Bayonetta) feels behind the times. I guess games that stress blocking instead can implement block offsetting.

Leaning is back in COD Black Ops at least for PC.

But yeah there need to be more leaning in FPS!

That's good it's back for the PC although I don't play PC games nor like COD. If Metal Gear Solid 4 and Metal Gear Online can fit 1st-person shooting and leaning into the control scheme of a 3rd-person shooter, then all FPSs should easily be able to include leaning on a console game controller. MAG would be like the perfect FPS if it had leaning.

 

[migo]

The brush from Okami. One of the most unique and non-repetitive magic systems ever. Surprised that there hasn't even been a variation on it in another adventure game/RPG.

The brush fits seamlessly in Okami. Almost anywhere else it would seem gimmicky.

 

[GiantRaven]

not sure if it qualifies as a mechanic per se, but im dreadfully sick of all the "violence control" in modern R.P.G's e.g. in games like baldurs gate 1 & 2 you could acxt like a complete psychotic and literally attack everything in the game, whether it made sense or not, it was always an option, same goes for worrowind, you could kill just about everyone, even breaking the game in the process, the point being, that it let YOU decide; which is pretty much the entire point of R.P.G's.

Another thin i want brought back is death status in party based prgs, whats with all this unconscious bullshit! when a characters health is gone in every modern pbrpg they simply fall unconcious until healed, although people dont want to have to ressurect their party memebers or go throught that hassle, knowing your party members aren;t immortal adds extra value to them; you actually have to look after ur mages! the reason i sited these two issues is because they totally break immersion... like when i trigger a trap in dragon age that blows up an entire room, and yet it only knocks my character out.

Bad idea imo. In a heavily story based game you can't have important characters dying off whenever they get downed in battle.

And when NPCs die what do people do? Reload the game and try again to keep them alive! Why not remove the momentary hassle in the form of game mechanic?

 

[Emilin_Rose]

Did any of you play the old game Quest 64? Waaaaaaaaaaay back in my day, it is the only game I have actually enjoyed based almost solely around it's gameplay. It's battle system was a 3d field, turn based style so you could actually run and dodge an attack thrown at you, and so could your more intelligent enemies(though not the cannon fodder ones, that just wouldn't be fair). It also had an interesting spell system in which every level you got to add +1 to any element and having certain elements high enough would unlock new abilities. There were an incredible amount(to me anyways) of spells that were gained by leveling up 2, or even 3 different elements to combine them into something awesome. My favorite part, however, was the way they did stat gaining. It wasn't like most rpgs where it's set so that at lvl 9 you gain +6 mana or something, or even like Fire Emblem where the stat gains are random(from the one i've played at least). In Quest 64, you had to work for your stat gains. Every spell and attack got more powerful the more you used it. If you were taking a beating from a boss and being completely devastated by your cripplingly low defense, you could do nothing but go out into the field and let the weak, cannon fodder guys beat on you until your health was low then killing them, healing, and repeating. You could only increase your in-battle movement range by utilizing the range you already had and moving as far as you could during your turn.

I have never seen a game since, that has actually made you sit and seriously work on a stat to increase it. Or one that makes your attacks more powerful the more you used them.

Quest also had some very unique monsters and what looked to be the frameworks of a decent story, if N64 fans hadn't demanded it be immediately released upon hearing of it to sate their rpglust.

Truly, if I ever achieve my dream of working at Nintendo, this is the game I will be remaking. And this time it will get the time and effort such an amazing battle system deserved.

EDIT: Also, the music was awesome. Seriously, go check it out on youtube or something. The battle theme was incredibly awesome in my humble(except not really) opinion.

Spoiler: I think I did the youtube tag right