In order to evolve, games need to devlop more mechanics that don't involve combat

[MirenBainesUSMC]

I'm surprised no one mentioned the Myst series

 

[Erttheking]

I'm not saying that games like that don't exist, (I've played half of those games. I mean geez, cut me a little slack) I'm saying I feel like they're not getting very good representation overall in the industry. I mean they feel royally outnumbered.

Well, action movies dominate Hollywood these days. That's just what comes with an industry that's out to make money. Formulas that are known to attract big bucks will always come out in spades. I think if anything it's now easier for games not centered around combat to come out. From Steam greenlight to kickstarters, indie developers who have different ideas that aren't getting picked up by major publishers have more ways than ever to get their games off the ground and to the masses. If you're having trouble finding games these days that aren't centered around killing or combat, I'm afraid you just aren't looking hard enough. Yes they're still outnumbered, but that's the way with any popular media. Name five comic book series' that aren't about superheroes. Name five summer blockbusters that don't involve fighting. Name five young adult novels or films without a romantic subplot. Some tropes just stick because marketing demands it.

I didn't say that I couldn't find them, I'm saying that I can't find that many of them and I'd like to see more of them.

 

[MirenBainesUSMC]

I think before anything is concentrated on whether there is too much action/kill vs Puzzle/Non-violence, the game industry needs a total evolution on their writing abilities.

The last few games I've finished had such terrible endings, and in some cases, a very generic if not cliche filled plot that was uninspiring.

I mean look at the amazing looking Kill zone 4 Shadow fall. A graphic dud in the writing department compared to the plot they were following in the last two installments.... and ... I won't even talk about the thin piece of ice you must skate upon to get to a very....lets say thumbs down conclusion. How do you go from dramatic intros with powerful voice overs to what they came up with for the PS4 debut?

More attempts at what Bio-Ware was able to accomplish with its running series of Dragon Age/Mass Effect should be looked into. They started something pretty dynamic in that area although it wasn't totally executed well, it was a lot better done than most.

 

[Liquidprid3]

Do a large majority of games focus on combat/violence? Yes. But there are plenty of games and genres that have little combat. There are fun games that don't have any violence or killing, but I'd be lying if my I said my favorite games didn't have any type of violence. My top 5 for example (well off the top of my head my favorites)

1. Super Mario World
2. Dark Souls
3. EarthBound
4. Super Smash Bros. Melee
5. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

All involve fighting in some form or another. I think many people would agree that their favorite games involve some sort of violence. I think it's a result of genres. Many genres need some sort of humanoid or animal-like creature to create challenge or opposition for the player.

Personally, If I wanted a point and click or puzzle game, I'll play one, and I have. I don't think it's laziness, just a result of trying to challenge the player.

 

[Breakdown]

Maybe violent games are the end of the road where game evolution is concerned. GTA and Call of Duty are the apex predators.

 

[Ushiromiya Battler]

Pretty simple really, just stop playing AAA games.
That's what I did, now I rarely ever see excessive violence, sexism or misogyny.

You, as the consumer, have a choice. Utilize it. Simple as that.

 

[pilar]

61% of mainstream games released in 2013 featured killing as a primary form of gameplay, and that doesn't include games with non-lethal fighting. This is a much higher rate than any other mainstream artistic industry.

There are a lot of problems with this, but one is just how lazy it encourages developers to be. Modeling a gun, modeling a bullet, animating a new corpse. Stuff that's been done millions of times before in games. That doesn't require dialogue, it doesn't require player thought beyond the strategic interests of maximizing lethality and minimizing damage taken and resources used. It doesn't even require a context - guns, bullets, and new corpses can exist anywhere, at any time in the modern age, and if it takes place before then the guns and bullets are replaced with swords.

Great games can be made about killing, just like great books and movies can be made about killing, and many have been. But the reason there are relatively few books or movies about killing is that humanity and the world we live in has a tremendous variety to it, and killing is just ONE human activity, and not a very common one in most people's lives.

When a writer sets out to write a screenplay, he chooses from thousands of basic themes, and then takes that theme in one or a few of millions of possible directions. The result is something original and (sometimes) precisely what the writer wants to say. Because it's original it's *interesting* and the viewer sees something he's never seen before and sometimes is enlightened by the experience.

Everyone knows that's not what happens in the game industry. Developers don't start with the full range of human expression and experience. They've grown up on killing games, they've made killing games in the past, publishers WANT them to make killing games because they think that's what the market wants and they know how to market it, so that's what they keep making.

And then gamers convince themselves that's what they want, after being told for decades that's what they want. It's called being weak minded, like the beer industry marketing to a demographic which sits on the couch ogling near-naked women with a beer in hand which didn't exist (in nearly such numbers) prior to a sustained marketing campaign that told them that's just who they are.

There's a reason "Bro" culture is a recent phenomenon, and it has nothing to do with some recent trend in human nature. It has to do with recent marketing strategies.

Don't be a fucking tool. Don't let the game industry define what you want a game to be.

Shadow Fall, a Freaking Gorgeous Shooter!​

Some people call it a necessary evil.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, if its done with balance.

Journey, Freaking Gorgeous Indie​

SONY markets their big shooters, Infamous, Shadowfall & Uncharted -- games that usually hallmark the genre with a high level of production to the combat that can't be beaten by third party rivals. On the other hand, they use this success of marketing their platform for smaller indie titles like Journey & hohokum; not to mention experimental stuff like Beyond: Two Souls.

What's astounding is how many of their titles win Game of the Year Awards. They've owned this award for 2 of the last 3 years -- Last of Us & Journey. Not to mention Uncharted 2 in 2009.

So while my favorite games are Fallout 3 and Uncharted; there's still a very special place in my heart for Shadow of the Colossus and Journey, etc...

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

A lot of it is to do with the action and skill. It's the difference between skateboadring and playing chess. Both have merits, but a lot of gamers choose the action side of gaming over the mental stimulation side.

This is why games with lots of action violence do well, as it's all about honing your skills and being proactive/reactive to get better. That's why arena modes are getting more and more popular, because it's not about completing, but getting better. The modern take of the arcade machine score board.

This is also the reason why sports and racing games are also really popular. Whenever a new football (soccer) game is released in the UK it will make a lot of money and usually top, or nearly top the charts. Racing games do similar. There are a lot of gamers that like these type of action games.

What the OP mentions is where you can blend more novel mental exercise elements that blend with action skill, or even making more games that only involve mental stimulation. This works for many games, such as the ones mentioned, and for stuff like Mass Effect and other WRPGs or puzzle elements in DmC and that style game. It definitely has it's place, but will not slow the pace of action shooters.

Solely mental games are hard, mostly for variety. To make a game like that last you usually have to go for a puzzle game, and normally with randomised gameplay (bubble bobble/match 3 type stuff) to keep variety.

You could also argue that JRPGs and SRPGs are solely thinking games too, if they are turn based. As it is about choosing the right attack/status ailment/buff/debuff or element rather than split second decision making, and therefore can become more of a thinking game over a traditional combat-fest.

There are, of course, some gems that are action, not sports and have minimal combat. Stuff like Mirrors Edge come to mind. Then there are those like Dishonoured and Thief that allow you to choose not to fight. My no kills playthrough of Dishonoured was some of the most tense fun I have had with a game.

I think it's less about trying to change the industry, but more about getting people totry different games. The games are there, they just often get missed.

 

[Thorn14]

And here I am thinking that combat mechanics in games have actually gotten WORSE over time...

But yeah, I love it when RPGs allow you to skip combat or make it easier through smarter dialogue choices.

Though it is a bit weak sometimes when its just "you have dialogue stat at a certain point so click the dialogue button to bypass it."

They should offer us a ton of dialogue options and have us make our own arguments.

Shame so many RPGs are now condensing dialogue choices to a 6 sided wheel.

 

[AuronFtw]

The RPG genre is the one place where combat doesn't even need to there at all yet almost every RPG has you spending more time fighting enemies more than anything else.

That's actually a recent trend. In "the good old days" of PC gaming, the best RPGs on the market (...and honestly, they're quite possibly still the greatest RPGs ever made) had plenty of non-combat activity. Plenty of puzzles. Plenty of character management; inventory, spells, stats, equipment. And in those games, spells weren't just four different flavors of fireball. You had invisibility for sneaking around places you shouldn't be, spells to unlock doors, spells to charm NPCs into offering you better prices on their wares, spells that increased night vision, spells to detect the alignment of targeted NPCs. Spells with utility, in short.

And a *lot* of those games (Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment) were spent in dialog. If you didn't carefully study the situation, or if you ignored your quest log, you could very easily say the wrong thing to the wrong person and end up in a pitched battle. Sometimes you just pissed off someone you could have otherwise used as an ally. Some of the "fights" in those games were logic puzzles: a few djinnis in BG1 and 2 actually have pop logic quizzes, and successfully answering them saved you a lot of hassle in the long run.

Successfully navigating dialog was a hell of a lot more complicated back then, too; your character's stats and abilities were taken into account, especially when attempting to bribe, bluff or lie. Dialog wasn't boiled down to "the good response," "the bad response," and "the neutral response," a la Mass Effect, either - you often had 7 or 8 choices (occasionally more!) that could get very specific, or inquire about specific aspects of the situation before proceeding/making a decision. And sometimes, depending on who you were talking to, those were the wrong choice, if that NPC was short tempered or what have you. It all came together to create a pretty great environment, where the occasional combat (which was also difficult, complex and rewarding) wasn't really the "focus" of the game; the story was. Depending on your build, and your patience, you could sneak around unlocking doors and looting chests without killing most of the enemies (but since bosses weren't optional and didn't scale, that was typically a poor choice long-term). Deus Ex HR had a couple examples of "boss fights" that were basically conversations; two off the top of my head are with the guy in the bar in china and jensen's boss after he learns . Both were great, and that kind of talk-your-way-out-of-trouble would have fit very well in BG in lieu of one or two of those boss fights.

It was kinda sad to see the general trend float toward combat, even from the company that made both BG and PS:T. Their next big hit was KOTOR, a relatively above average star wars RPG that wasn't nearly as good as either of its predecessors, but was still serviceable and had a decent amount of dialog. Unfortunately, the jedi/sith moral choice system became the precursor to the good/bad/neutral dialog wheel common in games today, and so the actual dialog options available were MUCH simpler compared to BG/PS:T. Mass effect streamlined this further, removing the class duality concept (light side/dark side mirrors of the same class) and packaging your paragon or renegade perks into additional dialog choices. Make enough of the "good" choices early on, and you can make the *really* good choices later when it matters "most." To replace the gaping hole left by the dumbed down dialog system, kotor and ME used increasing amounts of combat - to a level where ME is mostly combat. Yeah, it has a codex with lore info. Yeah, it's got an expansive world with plenty of great characters with great backgrounds and motivations. But the gameplay? It's all combat. Hell, in ME3, there was even an option to play it as a full-on "action game," where the dialog choices were automatically picked for you, and all you had to do was the combat. A very sad devolution of a once great genre of games.

(I still enjoyed ME1-3, but they could have easily had half as much combat or less and still been as good... which I think is the point of this thread).

And here I am thinking that combat mechanics in games have actually gotten WORSE over time...

So much this. It's particularly apparent, IMO, in the final fantasy series. Starting with fairly standard JRPG turn-based, evolving into the neat and flexible ATB system which peaked with FFX (but was pretty great throughout several previous titles), they threw out that system with X-2... and it went downhill from there. Party members primarily controlled through pre-programmed if:then statements and slow, lumbering combat (that's supposedly "real time combat") with huge delays before and between attacks made FF12 and FF13 positively blow. They're very pretty games, but the combat in them sucked massive dick. I much preferred the older JRPG system where you actually controlled each party member each turn they took, and felt that allowed much more flexibility in the long run. If you're going to have that kind of ATB system, keep the rest of the system to match it; don't throw out half of it and keep only pieces and parts that don't work alone.

It seemed like they were trying to go for action combat, so I figured a battle system more akin to GoW/DMC (or for trash mobs, even more buttonmashy ones like dynasty warriors) would fit their "dream," but they stick to clunky, slow, unrealistic ATB for their "realistic actiony combat" and it just makes the whole thing a joke.

A lot of people bash fully turn-based combat for being unrealistic, but when you branch away from that and make something that's unrealistic, unengaging and unfun... you should get an award. Some kind of golden raspberry award for worst mechanics change.

 

[Thorn14]

For the most part, except in the thankfully growing kickstartered RPG genre, RPGs in the west have now come to mean "Third Person Action Game with tacked on levels and stats."

I blame AAA gaming and "need to appeal to a wide audience" for that.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Most definitely, though even when it does seem that progress to do with this kind of thing is a bit slow whenever we're hit with the latest big AAA release that does absolutely nothing new or interesting, there's still a lot of cool stuff and innovation all over the place. That said even within games that are all about combat there's a lot of room to add something more. For instance I've never seen a singleplayer shooter with any meaningful mechanics that allow you to take prisoners, design your own weapons and vehicles from scratch, build structures or manage and gather resources, stuff that would conceivably be necessary in your typical war game setting and related to the fighting but doesn't directly involve it.

 

[Arqus_Zed]

Eh... Kind of seems like the remark of a snobbish film critic.

You know, complaining that Hollywood doesn't do anything but producie action flicks for a PG-13 audience. But then you realize that, a), there are actually tons of non-action films coming from both Hollywood and indie sources - and b), some action films really do set a new standard, sometimes related to its combat, sometimes not.

So, yeah, I disagree on both accounts:

Too many games that involve combat?
Nope, we have entire genres dedicated to non-combat gameplay: racing games, puzzle games, adventure games, certain subdivisions of (real time) strategy, simulators (god sims, racing sims, amusement park sims, train sims, 'The Sims', etc.)

Games that involve combat are trapped within certain confines?
ICO
Shadow of the Colossus
El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron
Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call
Shadow Hearts
Rez
Final Fantasy IX
Killer7
Okami
Hotline Miami
Patapon
GTA
Legend of Zelda
...

All games that did something special, something unique, bringing something new to the table, sometimes creating an entire new genre.

 

[kilenem]

I think that Combat games are good just like FPS, its just could the publishers stop making the same game every time or badly.

 

[BarkBarker]

So many resort to a baseline of violence because it is something we can all understand and grasp, it is the primal part of us all and simply conveys a concept to a player. But that HAS evolved, significantly, to the point I'm very wary of buying some games with excessive violence because it maybe, just maybe, is gonna make me somehow feel bad about it, and I'm rarely in the mood for that.

Loads of games have altered the way we think about our games with combat in them, and loads have altered stubborn minds about how to present a story by doing so fantastically in a combatless environment. Evolution is not something we are gonna get by doing "this" or "that", it'll happen naturally with time, we are humans after all, the budgets for aggressive flashy games will either diminish or die, then they either go forward or join those who could not change with the times.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

indeed; the thing to me is that most combat feels like padding. It's just the easiest way to make gameplay. Now, conversational systems, puzzle solving, exploration, those are difficult to implement and make them FUN. I think combat wouldn't bother me so much if a lot of it weren't so pedestrian. Sure, not everything can be Devil May Cry 4, but you'd think designers would use the hardware to advance gameplay depth. It also doesn't help that I've seen way too many games where the level design was PATHETIC. Seriously, just a bunch of dull corridors or basic obstacles that only give the bare minimum of tactics. No vertically, no real flanking, no fun ways to use the terrain to your advantage, just something to give a backdrop with high res textures. Seriously, when you're designing stage architecture you have to have a playground mentality.

Anyway, I think part of this can be due to too many studios having this AAA mentality with EVERYTHING. As such, there's no real room for variety or experimentation. That and the need to realize that they can't just take path of least resistance with everything.