"Why don't more games have this?!"

[Aerosteam]

Do you have in mind any smart, convenient or unique features and ideas in a game which are particularly rare and would like to see them in others? The remaster of Radiant Historia got me thinking of this thread. The game's been out for 7 years and I haven't seen its main gameplay hook since (maybe because the game has only ever reached a small cult status).

Gushing about Radiant Historia starts now.

It's a turn-based JRPG, with a similar turn system to Final Fantasy X. You can re-order your turns so that your party members can attack in a single chain, and if you want more, you can let your enemies attack before you do to get an even longer chain. Like Bravely Default, but instead your defences lower so there's more risk but has a bigger payoff since you have much more control over who attacks and when.

Why would you want to chain together attacks? Because you can do shit like this:

Spoiler

If that went by you, the gist of it is that the enemies have a position system, not your party. You have access to attacks which push enemies on a grid, and if they connect with another, they now occupy the same tile. Once that happens, any attack (even ones which push) apply to all those enemies. This allows you to be able to do more with less, it makes you feel smart by clumping together potentially every single enemy you're up against and using a high-damaging attack on them as opposed to just one. It's such a cool system and you can do such much with it I'm surprised it hasn't popped up in other places.

 

[American Tanker]

Well, I guess one I can think of, I first saw it in Sega's combat racer Full Auto but encountered it much more in CodeMasters' racing games, specifically DiRT 2 was the first of theirs' I played that had it.

The ability to rewind sections of a race to correct mistakes made during a run.

Of course you only get so many times you can do something over, but the fact that the ability exists at all is huge. The ability to pretty literally turn back time to fix mistakes. I wish some shooters would implement that. No more bullshit deaths caused by random grenades.

 

[Dalisclock]

A lot of games have music players or radio stations(every Metal Gear since MSG4, Every Fallout game since 3) but one thing stands out in my mind as lacking.

Namely, the ability to use your own music in the games. A music folder or something that the game could pull from, so you could listen to your own playlist. This would be especially nice in games where the radio playlist is limited(looking at you Fallout 3/New Vegas) and you end up hearing the same songs over and over again.

Why does this bug me? Because Grand Theft Auto: Vice City had the MP3 station option back in 2002 and almost no game I've seen since has had it. Even Saints Row, which normally has a pretty good soundtrack, doesn't have this option.

Is it a legal issue? Is it really hard to plug an MP3 player into a game that already allows listening to music on a playlist as part of the experience? I don't get it.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Honestly, a ton of the systems Bravely Default brought to the table were excellent. Adjustable encounter rates, the Brave and Default mechanics are fantastic ideas, etc. I'm sure there's more, but bleh

 

[Squilookle]

A few spring immediately to mind-

In Unreal Tournament, if you're crouching, you can't fall off a ledge. You physically just can't do it. It's so stupidly simple it's brilliant, and all 1st person games should have it.

In Goldeneye, higher difficulty adds more objectives to a level. In Perfect Dark it sometimes even changes start points and opens other areas you have to go through instead of the ones you know. It's hard to describe how much benefit this brings to replayability. All games set in enclosed pre-planned levels should have this.

Star Wars Battlefront II released in 2005 with a full singleplayer campaign, instant action against a full serverload of bots on every single level, and a 'choose your own path' galactic conquest mode that could be played solo, with, or against other people. All Star Wars Battlefront games should have this.

(And any Battlefield-like game, to be honest).

In fact, all shooters ever made should have instant action mode against decent AI bot opposition. Even singleplayer only shooters. This should be decreed by law.

Conker's Bad Fur Day allows you to skip cutscenes after you have viewed them once. More importantly, the start button will pause the cutscene just like it pauses any other part of the game. This system of cutscene management has never been topped and should become standard in all games with cutscenes.

Some games with long scrolling menus (I'm citing Perfect Dark again here but there are loads others) jump straight back to the top item if you press down when at the bottom. Again this is incredibly simple, but some games even today don't always get it right. Standardise it now.

In Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, when you first load it up, 'Start New game' is at the top of the menu screen, and highlighted by default. Once you have a save, 'Continue game' appears on the menu, but it is underneath Start New, with the latter still highlighted first. This is bad. All games with a front-end menu that includes a save-sensitive 'continue/load game' option should have it appear right at the top, and highlighted ready to go. We select 'continue' hundreds of times during a playthrough. We only select 'new' once. Also in-game pause screens should have the 'retry' option extremely close to the initial highlighted option. You want to absolutely minimise frustration time for players when they mess up in game. having to memorise a long winded menu navigation to restart is poor game design.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Just more damn control in general. Games like Halo 3 and Unreal Tournament used to have a metric ass-ton of options to change and configure to your liking. Now we just get incredibly railroaded multiplayer experiences with forced progression systems.

I don't like the feeling that the game is fighting with me to stop me getting what I want out of it. Actually, maybe I am mad at you, Assassin's Creed: Origins. I'm so sick of all this! I'm sick of playing triple-A games that feel like they exist not because a creator had a vision and an idea that excited them, but because quarterly income projections needed to be met.

-

In Unreal Tournament, if you're crouching, you can't fall off a ledge. You physically just can't do it. It's so stupidly simple it's brilliant, and all 1st person games should have it.

While this is a great feature indeed, I can see why it's not implemented nowadays. It works in UT99 because that game has very simple level geometry. Edges are straight and precise so the game easily knows what's a ledge and what's not. It starts to fail though when you get games with more complex level geometry. Unreal Tournament 2004 is a perfect example of this. It still has the no-fall crouching but it can sometimes straight up not work at all when you're moving over jagged or round edges or really any edge that isn't straight. Now, to be fair, UT3 I think might have fixed this but I'm not sure. I'll test it out later.

 

[Squilookle]

While this is a great feature indeed, I can see why it's not implemented nowadays. It works in UT99 because that game has very simple level geometry. Edges are straight and precise so the game easily knows what's a ledge and what's not. It starts to fail though when you get games with more complex level geometry. Unreal Tournament 2004 is a perfect example of this. It still has the no-fall crouching but it can sometimes straight up not work at all when you're moving over jagged or round edges or really any edge that isn't straight. Now, to be fair, UT3 I think might have fixed this but I'm not sure. I'll test it out later.

Hmm I dunno- I never had a problem with it in UT2004. Then again I'd only really ever crouch while sniping from on high, and yeah, you absolutely do not want to fall of ledges while scoped in somewhere else.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Ever since playing Bayonetta when it released, I thought that like every action combat game was going to copy the dodge offset mechanic of being able to continue combos after a dodge. You could also apply that to blocks for a game where blocking is your main defense. Souls could've added both a dodge and block offset mechanic into the combat to allow for much more depth.

Horizon Zero Dawn just for it's extremely reserved nature that most open worlds should copy. There's seriously less collectibles in Horizon than Uncharted 4. There's 5 or 6 "towers" to climb instead of the 20+ of a Ubisoft game. There's only like 10 total things to find in each area of the map so the map isn't littered with ? marks. Then, there's only 40-something actual quests to do instead of like millions of them. The less content there is, the higher quality each piece of content can be and you need to strike a good balance of that instead of advertising the world is triple the size of your last game with 200+ hours of content. Much like a Team ICO game where you only add stuff to the game that enhances the core of the game.

Snip

Xenosaga II had, I think, a really similar battle system, which was all about setting up a long string of attacks against enemies. You would have to set up the first character in your "chain" to break the enemy and then you could knock them up in the air or knock them down to the ground, then you would have everyone else basically unload on them before their next turn. The enemy would be stuck in the air until their next turn so you would have to actually "pass" on your turns a lot so you could set up a bunch of character turns in a row. But, of course, fans hated the battle system for being too slow (it's fucking turn-based, it's supposed to be slow) and the series returned to bog standard boring ass JRPG combat for the 3rd game.

Honestly, a ton of the systems Bravely Default brought to the table were excellent. Adjustable encounter rates, the Brave and Default mechanics are fantastic ideas, etc. I'm sure there's more, but bleh

Or actually fix the core issues that cause said problems. Something like an adjustable encounter rate isn't fixing the core issue of a game having too much grinding. RPGs, both kinds (J&W) have so many core issues that never get fixed because it's just the way things have been done for decades. It's like Geralt in Witcher 3 being a master witcher but can't use a level 2 sword at the start of the game. Maybe restricting gear to player levels is actually a bad mechanic itself?

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Hmm I dunno- I never had a problem with it in UT2004. Then again I'd only really ever crouch while sniping from on high, and yeah, you absolutely do not want to fall of ledges while scoped in somewhere else.

BTW, yeah, they fixed it in UT3. Damn... If only that game didn't suck. UT3 actually has a fair few really cool things in it that the other UTs don't have. The weapon balance for one is just spot on this time.

 

[Zetatrain]

A lot of games have music players or radio stations(every Metal Gear since MSG4, Every Fallout game since 3) but one thing stands out in my mind as lacking.

Namely, the ability to use your own music in the games. A music folder or something that the game could pull from, so you could listen to your own playlist. This would be especially nice in games where the radio playlist is limited(looking at you Fallout 3/New Vegas) and you end up hearing the same songs over and over again.

You could actually do that in the PC port of MGS5. All you had to do was drag your music to a music folder in MGS5's files. I don't know if this was intended or just a side effect of Konami's programming. Unfortunately I don't think you can do this in the console versions.

Ever since playing Bayonetta when it released, I thought that like every action combat game was going to copy the dodge offset mechanic of being able to continue combos after a dodge. You could also apply that to blocks for a game where blocking is your main defense. Souls could've added both a dodge and block offset mechanic into the combat to allow for much more depth.

Horizon Zero Dawn just for it's extremely reserved nature that most open worlds should copy. There's seriously less collectibles in Horizon than Uncharted 4. There's 5 or 6 "towers" to climb instead of the 20+ of a Ubisoft game. There's only like 10 total things to find in each area of the map so the map isn't littered with ? marks. Then, there's only 40-something actual quests to do instead of like millions of them. The less content there is, the higher quality each piece of content can be and you need to strike a good balance of that instead of advertising the world is triple the size of your last game with 200+ hours of content. Much like a Team ICO game where you only add stuff to the game that enhances the core of the game.

Snip

Xenosaga II had, I think, a really similar battle system, which was all about setting up a long string of attacks against enemies. You would have to set up the first character in your "chain" to break the enemy and then you could knock them up in the air or knock them down to the ground, then you would have everyone else basically unload on them before their next turn. The enemy would be stuck in the air until their next turn so you would have to actually "pass" on your turns a lot so you could set up a bunch of character turns in a row. But, of course, fans hated the battle system for being too slow (it's fucking turn-based, it's supposed to be slow) and the series returned to bog standard boring ass JRPG combat for the 3rd game.

Honestly, a ton of the systems Bravely Default brought to the table were excellent. Adjustable encounter rates, the Brave and Default mechanics are fantastic ideas, etc. I'm sure there's more, but bleh

Or actually fix the core issues that cause said problems. Something like an adjustable encounter rate isn't fixing the core issue of a game having too much grinding. RPGs, both kinds (J&W) have so many core issues that never get fixed because it's just the way things have been done for decades. It's like Geralt in Witcher 3 being a master witcher but can't use a level 2 sword at the start of the game. Maybe restricting gear to player levels is actually a bad mechanic itself?

Well strictly as a gameplay mechanic, I see no problem with level restrictions on gear . It's a form of gameplay progression that is similar to unlocking abilities. Admittedly it might cause some disconnect between gameplay and story, but I personally never saw it as more than a minor issue in the games I've played (Witcher 3 included).

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Of course you only get so many times you can do something over, but the fact that the ability exists at all is huge. The ability to pretty literally turn back time to fix mistakes. I wish some shooters would implement that. No more bullshit deaths caused by random grenades.

Tracer from Overwatch more or less has this. Her Recall ability rewinds time, returning her health and position on the map to what they were 3 seconds before (Not your ammo tho. Instead you get a free reload). Has a 12 second cooldown.

You need to still be alive to use it tho. It can't undo death (tho it can save you from certain death situations like falling into a pit, if you Recall before reaching the pit's death trigger).

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Dragon's Dogma is a bad game, but it has a couple of features that really add to the immersion. The first is that getting drenched in water affects your carry weight and your clothes actually get wet. To dry off you need a towel. This not only feels realistic and logical and not in a bad way, but changes deep pools of water from an occasional speed bump to potential hazard, since you really don't want to get knocked down in water in the middle of a fight. The other is actually needing a light source at night, and having to refill your lantern with oil.

Far Cry 2 has a fantastically unintrusive UI for doing basically everything by having all the necessary information displayed as objects in the game world instead of separate menus. Like the map.

In Cthulhu saves the world you could (if I remember correctly) just initiate random encounters from a menu once you'd gotten to the end of an area. A simple feature that removes a ton of meandering from level grinding.

It's only an idea I've had for an Elder Scrolls game, but I think in-depth RPGs with a lot of features should have massive difficulty adjustment options. Not just four tiers of difficulty, but individual adjustability for basically everything: how severe diseases are, frequency, damage output, health, intelligence and aggression of enemies, the economy, possibly environmental and weather hazards and so on. This came as a result of being disappointed with Skyrim's difficulty settings only affecting enemy health and damage, when it could affect so much more.

 

[EscapistAccount]

In Goldeneye, higher difficulty adds more objectives to a level. In Perfect Dark it sometimes even changes start points and opens other areas you have to go through instead of the ones you know. It's hard to describe how much benefit this brings to replayability. All games set in enclosed pre-planned levels should have this.

My favourite was the Carrington Villa level where on easy and medium you were started in a sniper position overlooking a hostage negotiator but on hard you were the 'negotiator', sent in with a hidden gun and expected to take care of yourself.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Prototype 2 had DLC which basically allowed you to play with a maxed out, invincible Heller with new, insanely powerful weapons and abilities. It was basically God Mode; you couldn?t save your progress or affect the story while using these abilities; it was just to allow you to have frenetic and chaotic fun in the game world. I wish more games did that, even if they locked it behind progress, say, requiring you beat the game before accessing it. I?d love to run through Dark Souls with a maxed out character and an overpowered weapon.

And flying. The superhero world is rife with heroes and villains who can fly, yet so few videogames feature it as an unconstrained ability. I think it?s likely because flight can easily break a game, so they opt for ?gliding? abilities or other ways to restrict your access to the skies.

 

[American Tanker]

Tracer from Overwatch more or less has this. Her Recall ability rewinds time, returning her health and position on the map to what they were 3 seconds before (Not your ammo tho. Instead you get a free reload). Has a 12 second cooldown.

You need to still be alive to use it tho. It can't undo death (tho it can save you from certain death situations like falling into a pit, if you Recall before reaching the pit's death trigger).

Problem with that is, Overwatch is not the kind of shooter I'm likely to ever touch due to the heavy focus on competitive PvP and E-Sports.

If a good campaign-based shooter in the style of MW1 and prior in the CoD franchise could make such a mechanic work, then you'll get my interest.[hr]

Prototype 2 had DLC which basically allowed you to play with a maxed out, invincible Heller with new, insanely powerful weapons and abilities. It was basically God Mode; you couldn't save your progress or affect the story while using these abilities; it was just to allow you to have frenetic and chaotic fun in the game world. I wish more games did that, even if they locked it behind progress, say, requiring you beat the game before accessing it. I'd love to run through Dark Souls with a maxed out character and an overpowered weapon.

Didn't the Crackdown games on 360 do something similar with their "Keys to the City" mode? You could just use an in-game cheat menu to give your Agent access to maxed out abilities, all weapons, all vehicles, etc. etc. and just run around like a lunatic.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

snip

Problem with that is, Overwatch is not the kind of shooter I'm likely to ever touch due to the heavy focus on competitive PvP and E-Sports.

If a good campaign-based shooter in the style of MW1 and prior in the CoD franchise could make such a mechanic work, then you'll get my interest.

Fair enough. A singleplayer fps campaign with a similar mechanic to Tracer's Recall, or maybe something like Sands of Time's rewind, could be interesting.

Also, if there's multiplayer and everyone has, that seem like a ***** to balance. Perhaps also not that fun to play against, judging by how much a good Tracer can frustrate Overwatch players, and that's only one player per team.

 

[McMarbles]

It's funny you bring up Radiant Historia. The 3DS remaster has a new feature. In the original, you could gain a preemptive strike by hitting field enemies with your sword to stun them before triggering a battle. The 3DS version adds a new "Friendly Mode" where, instead of getting a preemptive strike, hitting enemies with your sword bypasses the battle entirely. You still get experience/gold/drops etc., but you've saved yourself all the time and resources you would have blown on the battle.

This is an absolute godsend for players who want to experience the story but don't want to get bogged down in tedious battles with every trash mob they run into.

 

[Aerosteam]

The 3DS version adds a new "Friendly Mode" where, instead of getting a preemptive strike, hitting enemies with your sword bypasses the battle entirely. You still get experience/gold/drops etc., but you've saved yourself all the time and resources you would have blown on the battle.

Huh, didn't know that was a thing, that's awesome. In Indivisible, the Skullgirls dev's upcoming game, preemptive strikes are exactly like your normal attack, and if you level up enough and attack an enemy in the overworld to OHKO them, it skips the battle and you get the correct amount of rewards.

 

[Bad Jim]

Or actually fix the core issues that cause said problems. Something like an adjustable encounter rate isn't fixing the core issue of a game having too much grinding.

In most games of that type you have a choice between grinding up your levels and actually learning the game mechanics and playing smart. The game is trying to encourage you to think, but you have the option of grinding and overpowering enemies as a backup in case you can't figure something out. If you could be overpoweringly strong without effort, there would be no incentive to play better.

Bravely Default also offers difficulty settings, so if you are not a tactical genius and can't figure out how to make progress without lots of grinding, you can try playing on 'easy'.

 

[CaitSeith]

That is feasible in RPGs with ATB. Instead of selecting the actions when prompted ASAP, you waited until all your party members were ready. There was no bonus for doing it like that though, but sometimes the optimal strategy required to wait for the enemy to attack first.

Anyways, Earthbound battle skip feature is something more JRPGs required: if your party is strong enough to win the battle unscratched on turn 1 by using normal attacks only, it gives you an automatic victory. It should be an option in many RPGs, as it saves a lot of time when backtracking.