Gaming Tropes There Should Be More Of

[deanb]

So we've a thread of things that should go, but now I've a thread of stuff I think should be more common. I guess Tropes might not be the right word, but it helps tie in easily with the other thread

 

Cos I've been jumping around a fair few RPGs of late there's a few in there I've picked upon:

 

Warn if you're in an area of "no return". An area where you can't so easily just jump back to the overworld or pop back into town for a while or something. I've been playing FFXII and it warns quite clearly as you hop up to a save crystal you're in an area where you can't easily get out, so maybe make a separate save point, just in case.

 

Incremental auto-saves. Deus Ex HR did this, I think it was either two or three auto-saves, so you wouldn't cock up or glitch and then the game save you in a totally fucked up area for eternity. This should be especially required for games that only provide an auto-save and no manual save slots. (Like Assassin Creed which I think AC:B had a auto-save related glitch)

 

Hitting start/escape always means pause, not skip cutscene. But also in this "menu" offer a Resume and Skip option too, for those of us who have seen this before either due to playing the game already or because we did the cutscene then died.

 

Auto-load save/battle/mission on death. Last Remnant takes you all the way to the main menu upon death, which means then loading the save file list then loading it up again instead of just reloading the battle you fucked up and letting you tweak stuff around (like Final Fantasy XIII for example).

 

Proper deaths. As in stuff like Mirrors Edge. Where you fuck up and the game doesn't go "out of bounds" or "low health" and presents a game over, it instead follows through right to the crunch.

 

Anywho I'm sure you've got your own.

[TheMightyEthan]

Incremental auto-saves. Deus Ex HR did this, I think it was either two or three auto-saves, so you wouldn't cock up or glitch and then the game save you in a totally fucked up area for eternity. This should be especially required for games that only provide an auto-save and no manual save slots. (Like Assassin Creed which I think AC:B had a auto-save related glitch)

 

Totally agree with this. Dishonored keeps I think 2 autosaves, which is quite nice.

 

*Edit* - Also, a way to pause cutscenes without skipping them is an absolute must.

Edited October 21, 2012 by TheMightyEthan

[MasterDex]

Score keeping in multiplayer games. If I get disconnected, I want to get whatever experience I earned and if I rejoin the game, I want my score to be what it was when I left. Tribes has at least the first part right, and I think BF3 does it too. I've only ever seen the second bit in 2142.

[Waldorf and Statler]

I'd like to have more FPS's where you can have more than 2 guns equipped at a time. Borderlands 2 did this recently.

[TheMightyEthan]

I don't have strong feelings one way or another on that, but I will say that in games striving for some kind of semblance of realism (which I know Borderlands is not) that only allowing you to carry two guns kind of makes sense.

[Waldorf and Statler]

Well don't quote me on this but I don't see it as much of realism as in console FPS's simplifying choices for the lowest common denominator and since most multi-platform games are made with this audience in mind we saw a lot of more of it until it became a standard. If they really wanted to make them realistic I wouldn't have to empty a clip on a boss' head before they died.

[TheMightyEthan]

Well right, and in the games where you have to do that obviously they can't claim realism as a defense. I was thinking more along the lines of Battlefield/CoD type things where even though they're not realistic they're trying to feel realistic.

[Mal]

For games like CoD or BF, it makes sense to limit to two weapons since you don't have an inventory. Now for games where you have infinite storage space, its totally fine to have as many weapons as you want.

[TheMightyEthan]

Halo fits in a weird place in that, at least in my mind: to be realistic I should actually be able to carry a lot more weapons. I mean, I could see limiting me to only one heavy weapon at a time, but I should be able to clip two or three rifle/shotgun-type weapons to my armor, as well as a couple of different pistol-types, Mass Effect style.

[Mal]

If you're a Spartan or maybe an Elite, I can see that being possible. Spartans has their armor. Maybe on the Elites since while they are as strong as a Spartan, I don't their armor being able to clip on two primary weapons at once. For an ODST soldier, we should be limited to two weapons since they're vanilla human. Now that I think about it, it would be a neat detail to have if we ever get to play as different kind of factions again.

[Mister Jack]

Fuck realism. I play games for fun.

[fuchikoma]

Coming out of sim racing, I have two suggestions:

 

Rewind button - I don't know many games that use this. I've heard of PoP: Sands of Time, and seen a sort of rewind-until successful mechanic in Linger in Shadows, but mainly I'm thinking of the Forza Motorsport games. Have you ever played a really long race in Gran Turismo, like 6+ laps (which is nothing compared to some races...) and you're doing everything right, but on the last corner, some mindless AI spears you off the track, costing you the whole race? When that happens in modern Forza games, you press a button and it rewinds the action a few seconds and flags your lap time as not clean. So basically it'll hinder you if you use it to set record times (the slowest clean lap still beats the fastest "dirty" one,) but it doesn't ruin the entire race for one mistake. It also lets you experiment with different approaches until you find the one that works, so it's a great learning tool. I'm not sure how this could be broadly applied to other games, but I think it could definitely be explored more. Allow it in cutscenes and non-combat scenes to catch lines people said that you missed, for instance. I'd also love it in games like Unit 13, where I have a grenade, I see a double doorway a few feet away - any idiot could make that throw - so I aim the crosshair between the open doors, throw, and the grenade bounces off the doorframe or the box I'm hiding behind or some other stupid place, landing at my feet and killing me. What? Why should I be punished for not even making a mistake? Rewind could save 15 minutes of retreading so many times.

 

Photo mode - A camera emulator for taking enhanced screenshots. Typically you'd find this in a replay mode. Pause the replay, move the camera to the best place to set up the shot, adjust camera settings like exposure, focal aperture, shutter speed, etc and shoot. Then it renders a high-res, enhanced rendering of the scene. It's a little thing, but it's kind of fun for fans of a given game, and it generates all sorts of nice, enhanced rendering screenshots of the game to act as word of mouth promotion.

 

Also, I've really developed a taste for a certain kind of retro-themed game the last few years:

Unforgiving games with no lives and quick restart - Things like Super Meat Boy, VVVVVV, The Impossible Game, IWBTG, etc. Sure, it SEEMS hard, and feels satisfying when you beat a level, but the difficulty of these games is really tied to your patience level since it will never slam the door in your face with a "game over" screen. I find this allows for a nice mix of high challenge and low stress and really, there's little need in most places to do the old ceremonial arcade ritual of stopping everything, showing you you've lost a life, and starting the level up again, and least of all to stop the game and tell you you can't play anymore in your own home. "Oh, I did badly, so I should feel bad and reflect on that while I spend the next hour getting back to where I was when I lost before..." A lot of people don't have time for that kind of thing, but also don't want games with a win button or big flashing indicators telling them everything they need to do to beat the game on the first try. So there's the niche for quick, brutal, streamlined games that offer a challenge, but let you make the most efficient use of your time and effort to clear them.

[TheMightyEthan]

@Mal: Yeah, I agree, I was just talking about when you're a Spartan. There's only been one game where you played as ODST.

 

Rewind button

 

Yeah, Dirt 2 (and maybe 3?) did this, and I loved it. Fantastic feature. In those games you had a limited number of uses of it, and on higher difficulties you had fewer uses. Great for when the physics wonks out or something odd happens.

 

Photo mode

 

Sounds like theater mode in Halo 3/Reach, which is another great feature. Other than racing games the Halo series is the only one I've played with anything like that, has it been used in other series?

[fuchikoma]

Sounds like theater mode in Halo 3/Reach, which is another great feature. Other than racing games the Halo series is the only one I've played with anything like that, has it been used in other series?

 

I've done it in Gran Turismo 4, Forza 3, Forza 4, Wipeout HD and Wipeout 2048. Wipeout Pulse also had something like that, but it was pretty much just setting up the camera position for a normally rendered in-game shot. Still, I was kind of thinking of FPS when I suggested more games use it. I remember in Counter-Strike there was a killcam mod on some servers that would save screenshots of headshots you got. It'd be cool to go back through a replay though and set up the camera with real, advanced photography settings and take some nice photos of memorable moments.

[MasterDex]

That reminds me - Battlerecorder. Every FPS should have it. It rocked in BF2 and 2142 but it only needs to be half as good. Recording 4gb 5 minute videos with Fraps is really not what I want. Also have an upload to youtube option.

[Waldorf and Statler]

Ugh it pisses me off when people complain about rewinding in a racing sim, Really? Would you rather restart that 20 minute race because of ONE fuck up?

[FMW]

There needs to be more scanning shit like from Metroid Prime. That's just such a smart way to tell a story in a game and throw in random bits of exposition. It's player initiated, so people only get as much of the narrative content as they want. It doesn't explicitly spell events out for you, instead leaving the player to piece together the bigger picture from the small fragments you pick up out of context along the way. It's also a method of storytelling that's only possible in a video game, and really leverages the medium. It also leaves room for the developer to add a TON of lore and worldbuilding stuff for the people who are interested in that kind of thing, but again without inconveniencing those who don't care.

[TheMightyEthan]

Wow I'm starting to sound like a Halo fanboy on this page, BUT

 

I really liked the scanning system in Halo: Anniversary. Like you said about Metroid it was completely player-initiated so it didn't inconvenience anyone who didn't give a crap, but it provided neat extra info on the world for those who did. My only real problem with it was that it was limited to Kinect...

[Waldorf and Statler]

no worries brometheus I love Halo too. Halo 2 was ok though.

[excel_excel]

I JUST WON 60,900 CASINO TOKENS FROM A SLOT MACHINE IN DRAGON QUEST VI!

 

These little places in JRPG's like casinos that house mini games, are fantastic. in DQ VI the first casino I'm at (there's 3 in the game I'm told) I can play the slot machines, which have charge more depending on which you pick, and I can play poker and try get more tokens that way, to buy powerful items. You pay 20 gold coins (the games currency) for 1 token. A little addictive distraction in a big world, I love it. Of course the best example of a JRPG going totally crazy and giving you practically a themepark load of different mini games to play was Final Fantasy VII and the amazing Golden Saucer. Snowboarding, Chocobo racing, Basketball throwing, Mog's house, crane games. Awesome.

 

This trope should be in every JRPG. Casinos, card games like Tetra Triad from Final Fantasy VIII and Tetra Master from IX, glorious. I may have actually wanted to slog through XIII for more than 30 hours if they had an awesome little mini game like that to play.

[Mister Jack]

Final Fantasy XV: Golden Saucer DLC coming soon!

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

For me, I love cooperative reviving or healing mechanics, whether they're implemented in team-based competitive games such as TF2 or co-ops. Something about sacrificing one's own safety or supplies to help another player really does it for me in these games. I still remember in Battlefield 2 when a machine gun nest was tearing apart one of my team's squads and I had to rush across the field and dive to their position in order to revive one of them.

 

I also love a good platforming puzzle. It feels so directed (in other words, there's often only one intended solution), yet when you're trying to figure out how to use the game's physics and momentum to get to the goal, it has the illusion of free choice that keeps me interested.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Yeah, the cooperative reviving is always great, P4. I haven't experienced it in TF2, but I enjoy it in BF.

[TheMightyEthan]

Agreed, though it can sometimes get really frustrating when someone who should be healing you just isn't for no apparent reason.

[Waldorf and Statler]

It can also get stressful when in games like Castle Crashers one teammate dies every 5 seconds and he forces you to revive him everytime. This is especially stressful in boss battles when you have to keep doing it but the boss is attacking you at the same time so you end up losing a lot of life and screwing both of you at the end of the day.