Mechanics you'd like to see

[Souplex]

So I recently stumbled upon this thread:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.848825-Game-mechanics-features-you-like
In it someone complained about how games with morality systems tend to give evil points for being morally grey.
A major problem in games with morality systems is when you're trying to be neutral, it basically means alternating between being good and evil arbitrarily instead of genuinely being neutral.
I'd been kicking an idea around in my head about how performing morally grey actions could push your karma meter towards the middle (If you're good, you get bad points, if you're bad you get good points) and for games where rewards are tied to being at a certain morality level, rewards would be given for being consistently neutral as well.

Any ideas for game mechanics you've been kicking around?

 

[Zhukov]

Honestly, I'd like morality meters to just go away. Currently, the best they can hope for is to be unobtrusive.

Give the player a choice. Once they choose, have the world and characters react to that choice to whatever degree the plot and available development resources allow.

Done. No need to add "+5 Good Guy Points" in there, or "+5 Naughty" or "+5 Grey" or what have you.

Anyway, personally I'd like to see a confidence/bluff mechanic in stealth games. So rather than have enemies instantly recognise and engage you when you're in their line of sight (or out of shadow, or undisguised or whatever the game uses), make it possible to avoid detection just by looking like you're supposed to be there. Moving consistently, interacting with the environment, performing actions appropriate to the location and your appearance.

It would be tricky as fuck to implement though. You'd either have to make it very simple so the player knows exactly what counts as "appropriate" or risk having players get frustrated over being engaged because they looked at the guards too many time or changed direction erratically or something.

 

[josemlopes]

Not really all that related but someone take the Resident Evil 4/5 gameplay (Stop, aim and shoot) and make either a cop game out of it or a military shooter (not multiplayer competetive as that would be terrible). I have been playing Jagged Alliance: BiA and if that game let you actually control the characters it would have a control system close to how the characters in RE 4/5 are controled.

 

[josemlopes]

Not really all that related but someone take the Resident Evil 4/5 gameplay (Stop, aim and shoot) and make either a cop game out of it or a military shooter (not multiplayer competetive as that would be terrible). I have been playing Jagged Alliance: BiA and if that game let you actually control the characters it would have a control system close to how the characters in RE 4/5 are controled.

But that wouldn't make sense for a Cop or Military game. They teach you fire and movement in the Army.

Yeah, it wouldnt be exactly something to be called realistic but that aiming system basicly gives priority to position over reflexes (since you cant move you cant afford to be in a position where you can be hit by multiple targets to quickly hide between shots), it would be more about giving a different type of gameplay to a shooter, similar on how you can have turn based games like X-Com, real time like Commandos or top down shooter like Cannon Fodder (they arent realistic either but provide a nice type of gameplay)

 

[Smooth Operator]

I concur on morality meters and points (possibly colour fucking coded dialogue options), that shit just perpetuates it's own problem. Not only does it turn something as weighty as moral into a completely arbitrary coin collection but it also constrains the entire concept into piggy banks of good/bad/idk.
Hiding the mechanical background by which NPCs will respond might not seem like a big difference but it's huge to our brain because we then need to fill in the blanks as they would make sense with actual people rather then an obvious math problem.

The other thing I would like to see is health status being accurately represented as by character damage, and the start of this system could be something completely childish to get thing going, let's say a robot made of balls that fall off as the character takes damage.
Actually Loadout has a pretty neat visual effect from being shot in critical places, part of you arm/head/leg might be missing when hit, but in that game it's only an occasional cosmetic difference.

 

[Ellie O'Daire]

I'd love to see some open-world game do some more in-depth modeling of mesoscale weather systems. Not like procedurally generated supercells and thermals (then you're getting into "we need a supercomputer for this" territory), but even just something basic like the generic "stormy" weather mode having scattered storms a few miles apart rather than uniform storminess over the entire map.

 

[Bad Jim]

Regenerating ammo. We have regenerating health, so why not regenerating ammo?

Most arguments in favour of regenerating health also work for regenerating ammo.

You are even more screwed when out of ammo than at 1% health.

People who never use the best weapons because they don't want to waste ammo might start using them.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Honestly, I'd like morality meters to just go away. Currently, the best they can hope for is to be unobtrusive.

Honestly, I like Fallout: New Vegas' system that simply keeps track whether some people like you or not. Because that's ultimately what actions really boil down to, some people like you for certain actions and some don't. A grand morality meter makes no sense.

 

[otakon17]

Honestly, I'd like morality meters to just go away. Currently, the best they can hope for is to be unobtrusive.

Give the player a choice. Once they choose, have the world and characters react to that choice to whatever degree the plot and available development resources allow.

Done. No need to add "+5 Good Guy Points" in there, or "+5 Naughty" or "+5 Grey" or what have you.

Anyway, personally I'd like to see a confidence/bluff mechanic in stealth games. So rather than have enemies instantly recognise and engage you when you're in their line of sight (or out of shadow, or undisguised or whatever the game uses), make it possible to avoid detection just by looking like you're supposed to be there. Moving consistently, interacting with the environment, performing actions appropriate to the location and your appearance.

It would be tricky as fuck to implement though. You'd either have to make it very simple so the player knows exactly what counts as "appropriate" or risk having players get frustrated over being engaged because they looked at the guards too many time or changed direction erratically or something.

Dragon Age Origins did that. There was no morality meter in it, just your companions reacting to your actions as would fit their personalities. And even they didn't have a "meter" per say. Unlike Dragon Age II but I'll not comment further on that.

OT: I got nothing to be honest, stuff like a pen and paper RPG I'd like to see armor not just keep your fleshy parts getting hit but have innate damage resistance(since you've usually got to go THROUGH the material to get to the meaty center) along with the standard armor class. Stuff like light armor would only get a bit of damage resistance while the heaviest stuff would have the most.

 

[otakon17]

Honestly, I'd like morality meters to just go away. Currently, the best they can hope for is to be unobtrusive.

Honestly, I like Fallout: New Vegas' system that simply keeps track whether some people like you or not. Because that's ultimately what actions really boil down to, some people like you for certain actions and some don't. A grand morality meter makes no sense.

You got a Karma meter though with is clearly defined into "Good/Evil" but to be honest the factions system in New Vegas is pretty good.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Honestly, I'd like morality meters to just go away. Currently, the best they can hope for is to be unobtrusive.

Honestly, I like Fallout: New Vegas' system that simply keeps track whether some people like you or not. Because that's ultimately what actions really boil down to, some people like you for certain actions and some don't. A grand morality meter makes no sense.

You got a Karma meter though with is clearly defined into "Good/Evil" but to be honest the factions system in New Vegas is pretty good.

Indeed, but funnily enough I only noticed later in the game that it was actually in there. Does it actually do something in F:NV? I had the feeling everything that matters is guided by your reputation with factions.

 

[Jonsbax]

I've had this idea of a stupid cartoony brawler (basic gameplay in the vein of God of War) where you'd fight robots, and the gimmick of the game would be that you tear apart your enemies when they're low on health and weaponize and combine their parts on the fly. For example, rip one enemy's head off and punch your fist in it to use it as a boxing glove (do it again to another one for a pair), and then take a leg off of other one to combine for a mace. It would be done with easy button combinations and be all quick and brutally stylish etc. The weapons would obviously degrade relatively quickly, so the player would have to keep up the rhythm of wearing down the enemies and re-equipping themselves with the weakened ones. Oh, and the enemies could still be kicking after losing a limb or two, obviously.

I'm imagining all this with an art style similar to Metal Slug, but then again I think every other game should have an art syle like that. I came up with this when I was wondering why in the hell doesn't Dead Space have a melee combat system similar to Eternal Darkness.

 

[Kieve]

I'd like to see a turn-based RPG that functions like the lovechild of Front Mission 4 and Legend of Dragoon.

• 
  -In FM4, certain weapons and components had a chance of triggering special attacks - "Double-Shot" and "Double-Punch" being my favorites. It was random and chance-based though, which meant it was nice when it worked but not a tactic you could rely on.
  -In LoD, basic attacks were called "Additions" and could be chained together and made more powerful by correctly timing your button presses (one of those rare points where QTE mechanics actually worked[footnote][Unlike QTEs as they're known these days, failing an Addition did not detract from the damage you'd already done or negate your progress in any way. The only downside to not completing them was not doing as much damage as you could have.][/footnote]). You could unlock stronger / more complex Addition techniques by successfully completing and leveling-up the previous ones.

So basically FM4 but with special abilities tied to some form of skill rather than a roll of the dice.

 

[kaiiboraka]

I donno if I can really think of mechanics specifically that I'd like to see... Hmm... Well, maybe an actually GOOD Spider-Man game built around excellent web-swinging, instead of the latter existing on its own without a solid rest-of-the-game. Similarly, we've yet to have a good Iron Man game. Lots of super-hero games, actually. Mechanically, I'd like to see more of those, with quality implementations of the powers, and the effects of those powers on the world.

But I also have this idea that's less of a mechanic that you're asking for and more... well, I suppose it is... Yeah, okay. Basically its the underlying game mechanics of a game I've been "working on" for the past two years, that is really based around the marriage of the mechanics of two games: WarCraft III and Fire Emblem: Awakening. I've designed a system that combines the RTS elements of base building and resource collection/management and army commanding, and the tile/turn based system of Fire Emblem. And it's awesome.

 

[Crazycat690]

Anyway, personally I'd like to see a confidence/bluff mechanic in stealth games. So rather than have enemies instantly recognise and engage you when you're in their line of sight (or out of shadow, or undisguised or whatever the game uses), make it possible to avoid detection just by looking like you're supposed to be there. Moving consistently, interacting with the environment, performing actions appropriate to the location and your appearance.

It would be tricky as fuck to implement though. You'd either have to make it very simple so the player knows exactly what counts as "appropriate" or risk having players get frustrated over being engaged because they looked at the guards too many time or changed direction erratically or something.

This would be good, in real life you wouldn't believe what you can get away with as long as you act like you're supposed to be doing it. The game that comes closest to this I would say is Hitman (though that's just for the costumes) or possibly Fallout: New Vegas, sometimes you could lie to get access to otherwise restricted areas. I would totally like to see more effort into these kinds of things, seems like a natural area to progress in. Shooting seems to be as good as it can be, there is a good standard in that area already so something like bluffing and lying your way through a game would be a new and welcome addition.

Personally, I'd like to see more interactivity, being able to think out a way out of a tricky situation without guns. Like, being able to move a large piece of furniture to a door, preventing enemies from chasing you (or at least slow them down). Or creating traps or something. Anything to make gameplay feel more dynamic, that's all, so many games today feel so gamey, I want more sandbox games. Like MGS have always felt pretty neat in that regard, or Hitman, fun stuff you can do on the fly, I suspect MGSV will improve on that though.

That was one reason I disliked Infinite too, became too gamey, too restricted in rules of how you could handle situations compared to the first game. TLoU was then again pretty good in that regard, hope to see more devs trying to achieve that dynamic flare to gameplay.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

More elaborate damage detection.

So headshots take into account helmets, meaning you have to be more accurate to ensure a 1-hit-kill or swordplay games take into account armour strength and coverage, so hitting a bare arm does more damage than an arm with leather or metal armour, not because it falls under the torso armour segment, but because it is actually covered by something.

 

[pilouuuu]

I'd like every single game to have features from The Sims.
More especifically I'd like NPC characters in games to have detailed personalities, needs and act according to them for their survival. I'd also like them to have different levels of friendship to other NPCs. We see something like that in Dragon Age, in which your actions have a response from your companions.

Also I'd like a detailed physical damage system like in Dwarf Fortress, where you can for example cut an arm, pinch an eye or make a character bleed out while they have hemorragies in their internal organs. That would be funny as hell in something with more... graphics. Like a hack n' slash or RPG game. At least Dragon Age Inquisition apparently will let you cut Dragon tails!

 

[Glongpre]

I thought the Witcher 2 did the best job so far in regards to a morality system. There wasn't a meter, you would just choose an option and then you would have to deal(or reap the rewards) with the consequences. And the options weren't an obvious, "I am evil!" or "I am such a saint!", with blue font for good and red font for evil.

A better stealth system and localized damage are both ideas that need more attention.

 

[Nimzabaat]

Anyway, personally I'd like to see a confidence/bluff mechanic in stealth games. So rather than have enemies instantly recognise and engage you when you're in their line of sight (or out of shadow, or undisguised or whatever the game uses), make it possible to avoid detection just by looking like you're supposed to be there. Moving consistently, interacting with the environment, performing actions appropriate to the location and your appearance.

It would be tricky as fuck to implement though. You'd either have to make it very simple so the player knows exactly what counts as "appropriate" or risk having players get frustrated over being engaged because they looked at the guards too many time or changed direction erratically or something.

They have that in at least one of the Hitman games.

On the topic of morality meters, so far Alpha Protocol was my favourite.

As for mechanics that i'd like to see? I'd like you to be able to just pick a personality in an RPG. Then your dialogue comes from that personality. Maybe have a yes/no option for certain conversations but then the actual dialogue stems from your chosen personality.

Another mechanic i'd like is for RPGs where your character just choses the best items and discards the rest without having to do inventory management. Maybe you could select in a menu what you're looking for and then every time you encounter a new item the AI just compares it to your desired stats and either picks it up or leaves it.