If you could bring back one thing about retro games what would it be?

[Bad Jim]

stop making multiplayer only games

I disagree on this one. Multiplayer and singleplayer are different kinds of game for different kinds of people and devs should not feel compelled to put both in the same box without good reason. It's as arbitrary as saying that 4X games should be bundled with RPGs.

 

[Blitsie]

Crazy coincidence that I just thought about this yesterday as I came across this comic:

It really, really sucks how cool things like costumes, artworks and generally other extras like cheats and unlockables got completely removed from gaming for the sake of making more money. What happened to the days where you actually had to achieve gold medal in some difficult challenge room to unlock that ultra cool costume? Or had to go through this process or find this hidden place to get that awesome thing? Now its all about paying five bucks for some pack or only being able to get it by pre ordering it at this certain store.

I love gaming as it is right now but man, some truly magical things got lost as time went on, remember tactical shooters like SWAT? What happened to those?

 

[spartandude]

Expansion packs. God damn do i miss the old days (not even that old tbh) where sometime after the game came out a £30 expansion would come out with about 10-15 hours worth of content (im basing this mostly on RPGs btw) rather than £10 for maybe 1.5 hours.

Also it may be me but has map design gotten worse lately? Over the past 4 years Ive seen more and more games with maps that are just slightly altered parts of single player missions. Halo Reach was the biggest offender to me especially after Halo 3 had some of my favorite maps in all of online FPS games because the maps were all design around multiplayer rather than what works for both the mp and sp.

 

[Cerebrawl]

Game over screen. Remember back in the day, when you could LOSE at a game. Hell the closes thing we got to a game over now a days is the " YOU DIED" message in darksouls. -snip video-

Have you heard of roguelikes? They'd like a word with you. I particularly like Dungeon of Dredmor's "Congratulations! You have died." gameover text.

Spoiler: Dungeons of Dredmor death compilation

Heck there's plenty of games that at least have optional hardcore/ironman modes if that's your thing. XCOM: Enemy Unknown comes to mind.

It's not gone, it's just not everywhere, or mainstream popular, because guess what, most people don't like it.

I do like me some roguelikes though, but hardly ever run hardcore/ironman otherwise. YMMV. It's also a genre that's been pretty much exploding in recent years, there's tons of them, roguelikes everywhere.

 

[krazykidd]

Game over screen. Remember back in the day, when you could LOSE at a game. Hell the closes thing we got to a game over now a days is the " YOU DIED" message in darksouls. -snip video-

Have you heard of roguelikes? They'd like a word with you. I particularly like Dungeon of Dredmor's "Congratulations! You have died." gameover text.

Spoiler: Dungeons of Dredmor death compilation

Heck there's plenty of games that at least have optional hardcore/ironman modes if that's your thing. XCOM: Enemy Unknown comes to mind.

It's not gone, it's just not everywhere, or mainstream popular, because guess what, most people don't like it.

I do like me some roguelikes though, but hardly ever run hardcore/ironman otherwise. YMMV. It's also a genre that's been pretty much exploding in recent years, there's tons of them, roguelikes everywhere.

Well i didn't necessarily mean ,"you die, lose all your continues and have to start the game over. It's just that most games it's die/respawn/load checkpoint in half a second and you barely get time to ackownledge you died. I liked game that have little (skippable)cinematics when you failed , kind of like chrono trigger, to give dying a little bit of weight. Just something to motovate me not to fail next time.

Buuuuut that's just me. I know people hate losing, hate being told they lost, and hate waiting.

 

[Chrozi]

Arcades.
I wish there were still dedicated arcades having walls lined with uprights and specialty cabs in the middle. No ticket redemption, thank you.

 

[Tellis Argonis]

6.) The brutal, painful death of the concept of 'pay2win' freemium business models. It's not okay to sell power. Basically, Secret World good, Warframe bad. (in monetization, anyway. Warframe's gameplay is at least rather fun for a while)

Lol who buys anything in Warframe? It's easy enough to get new weapons in that game, you can get everything in the game without paying a dime for it. It's also got a very very weak PvP aspect to it, it's almost all PvE, and the game pretty much -is- going out to get and make the gear. They also hand out 75% discounts on platinum like haloween candy in the daily drops so in case you wanted like, more item slots for weapons or characters, badabing. Or simply play, and get weapons, trade rare mods for platinum, Heck you get a bit of starting platinum to spend on whatever. Like a dumb, I bought this scarf cosmetic thing instead of getting character slots. However, I do parade around going 'Oh look who haaaas a syadana and you don't. Such fashion, such scarf thing.'

Not really, but I do like my scarf thing a lot.

It's not selling power in the traditional sense, it's more convenience than power to drop some money on a weapon or something if you're truly that impatient. There's also a bunch of weapons you can buy with credits up front without needing to craft them.

Warframe is free, and it doesn't require a single dime to actually be played. Their market could go about with saying 'hey there's weapons you can buy with credits here other than some better assault rifle' though I guess I just didn't pay attention.

 

[The Random Critic]

1. no fast travel
2. require more thoughts or reflex to go though certain encounters
3. more single player focus

 

[marioandsonic]

Arcades in general. I miss them so much. And I'm not talking about arcades that only consist of "Spend $20 to win enough tickets to earn a prize worth $5" games, I mean old-school arcades that had old-school arcade games with old-school style gameplay. Don't get me wrong, there are still some great recent arcade games (that new Batman driving game is fun as hell), but most arcades now pretty much consist only of ticket games with MAYBE a Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga cabinet stuck in a corner somewhere.

Speaking of which, you know what genre needs to come back? Beat-em-ups. Doesn't anyone else miss beat-em-ups?

RELATED EDIT: A few weeks ago, I was in the mall's arcade, and I saw three kids playing the old TMNT arcade game. I figured they wouldn't mind if I joined in, and that was one fun as hell playing session.

Do you know how long it's been since I was able to play an arcade game with 3 other people? I'm genuinely asking, because I seriously don't know. Not that I minded, because I couldn't help but have a huge grin on my face while I played. And while I will probably never see those kids at the arcade again, we were all there for the same purposes: 1. To take down the Shredder, and 2. TO HAVE SOME FUCKING FUN.

*exhales*

There, I feel better now.

 

[Tellis Argonis]

1. no fast travel
2. require more thoughts or reflex to go though certain encounters
3. more single player focus

Agility puzzles that you -need- to get through in order to progress in a game are bollocks. I'd much much much rather them for be in-game goodies instead of 'You must be graceful like ANTELOPE to pass!' Unless that's the whole focus of the game. But like, if it's like in some survival horror out of nowhere? Bah.

Also according to a lot of big budget produces -do- have 'reflex based encounters' in their games. I'll give you three guesses to what they call them.

There's a lot, a loooot of singleplayer focused games out and about nowatimes. It's you got to mainly look and search for them. Like finding a good multiplayer game same thing and all.

If it looks like I'm jammering nonsensically I'm sick and stuff.

 

[Someone Depressing]

A game that teaches you. You know games like The Void, and Shin Megami Tensei, and stuff like that? Well, yeah. They teach you. Instead of occasionally giving pro-tips and other crap that just clutters the screen when you want to play, the game gradually lets you understand its mechanics and how it works, what to do, ect. Most "retro" styled games have this as their very philosophy.

 

[StriderShinryu]

That's sort of tough given that there are so many retro-esque or retro inspired games out there these days if you look beyond the AAA scene. I also feel that, in general, games today are in a much better place than they've ever been in before. If I did have to pick one thing, though, it would be the music. There was just something that working within the specific limitations of the 8 and 16 bit eras brought out in composers. Working with that limited toolset and the limited resources forced the musicians to create something memorable and special each time out. Now a days there's still good game music, but so much of even the good stuff just sounds like run of the mill symphonic stuff that you could hear anywhere in any medium.

 

[AntiChri5]

The difficulty, pure and simple. No more easy modes that devaluate the value of having finished a game. I don't like the fact that some people can derp their way through games.

And why should everyone be forced up to your difficulty standards or just not play at all?

Are you seriously telling me that it's bad that people play games the way they want to?

If you started practicing a sport, only to discover that all the other participants were obese and that the entire game had been altered so no one could possibly fail, then you would be mad too.

It's true that single player games don't have a direct link like that, but there is an indirect link. Today people who can't handle properly difficult games play the mainstream games and are like "I just finished game X", which is like hearing "I scored 10 times last game" from someone who is not good at football, only to discover that they have changed the rules so that there is no goalkeeper and the goal is 4 times larger.

That is the worst comparison I have ever seen. Games are not sports, league of legends and starcraft excluded.

And people do play different versions of sports. Not official, mind, but still. Have you heard of the special olympics? Have you heard of wheelchair basketball? Your comparison is stupid.

Why do you suddenly get to decide how people should play games?

People decide how people play a certain game. I am a people. This thread was about what I would bring back and I would bring back retro difficulty with no easy mode.

Your comparison to the special olympics is even shittier.

I just don't like the idea of some dumbass derping his or her way through a game that should be difficult. When I accomplish something difficult in a game, the idea that someone else is just lazily laying on the sofa, with the difficulty turned down, doing the same thing just fills me with rage. It used to mean something to have finished a game, Mega Man 9 brought that back, but then Mega Man 10 took it right back.

If other people playing games on a lower difficulty literally fills you with rage, you may need to rethink some of your life choices. A sense of accomplishment is an important thing for most people and relying on videogames for it may not be healthy.

 

[aozgolo]

The absolute bonkers amount of stats and viable playstyles...

I seriously hate this modern "less is more" mentality especially when it comes to RPGs, combining and simplifying stats.

World of Warcraft did it to make it easier for them to balance things when they destroyed the old talents system and made it a streamlined progression that lacked any meaningful ways to make a hybrid build.

The Elder Scrolls did it, first by removing/combining certain skills (IE: Spears, Medium Armor, Short Blade) and then scrapping Stats altogether for only their derived statistics (Health, Magic, and Stamina)

Dragon Age did it when it claimed to be a spiritual successor to games like Baldur's Gate that had classes, subclasses, specialty classes, multiclasses, and dual classes, and DA:O only had Warrior/Mage/Rogue... seriously?



I want developers to quit dumbing things down for the sake of "balance" or "streamlining" and give me a very complex game that actually lets me see what my stats are and how I am impacting them. I get that not every demographic wants to "do math" to figure out what the best build is, or best item upgrade, etc. but I think that leaves the rest of us who want a complex deep game with lots of freedom to customize left in the dust.