Gaming Tropes There Should Be More Of

[Mister Jack]

Randomizer modes. Bloodstained added one and it's fun as hell. I think every action rpg should have one. Imagine replaying Dark Souls but all the enemy and item placements are completely unknown. Maybe you'll get lucky and get an overpowered piece of equipment right off the bat or maybe you'll get screwed by endgame enemies in the beginner area. Once you've beaten a game this is a great way to keep it interesting.

[Thursday Next]

So many of the things Ghost of Tsushima does I would love to see become open world videogame tropes:

 

The guiding wind. Love this instead of a 3D marker or constantly flipping back and forth from game to map.

The "if you choose to be a stealth ninja you know it is "bad" because the weather gets worse, but other than that the game doesn't judge you for it." thing (same goes for not punishing you for bowling in and shouting for people to come fight you).

The "press up to call the last few dudes in the camp to fight you, rather than running all the way to one end of the camp scouring it for enemies, and then realising the last guy you need to kill is back where you started" thing.

Your horse can be summoned from any distance (*stares at Breath of the Wild*).

When a mission says "Walk with [NPC]" and if you run, so does the NPC!

When you get one of those pointless battles in the world and you rescue a villager, they tell you where a nearby camp/mission is, so those encounters are not pointless any more.

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I hadn't really thought out how that game pushed open world design forward, but it really really did. None of it is earth shattering, but it's all stuff that now should be mandatory.

 

1 hour ago, Thursday Next said:

When a mission says "Walk with [NPC]" and if you run, so does the NPC!

 

This alone makes it GOTY.

 

*Edit - I want to add, they really made both stealth and going loud feel viable. Lots of games claim to, but none of them have ever succeeded like GoT. Normally if I'm using a stealth approach in a game and I get spotted or whatever I reload my save, but in this one I would actually switch armor and just engage them in combat. I think Assassin's Creed is the only game that's ever pulled that off for me before.

 

I also liked how they made all the different armors distinct enough that you actually switch. It's not just a matter of seeing which one has bigger numbers, or picking a favorite and sticking with it, they have qualitatively different benefits that you'll want in different situations, so you actually use them. I especially like how they encourage you to role-play by wearing the traveling clothes while traveling because they clear more of the fog of war.

 

[Thursday Next]

Oh yeah, the situational outfits are great. I still have my faves. Sakai for standoffs, traveller for well, travelling and ghost for fighting. But it's true, most games, even Horizon, I would get the "best armour" and stick with it, this incentivises switching (however, I would perhaps be less keen if the game wasn't utterly awesomely optimised. The menus are soooooo speedy!

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, you're definitely right about the speedy menus being key. I used traveler for travelling, Sakai for standoffs, Ronin (and later Ghost) for stealth, and Samurai for regular combat, and I got to where I could switch from any one of those to any of the others in less than 3 seconds, including hat and mask (because I'm anal like that).

 

Really could have used an armor loadout system though.

[Thursday Next]

Yeah. Armour loadout would be great. Like three or four customisable renameable slots would be fine. I also have to switch my lid and mask when changing outfit.

[Mister Jack]

Playing Yakuza: Like a Dragon has made me realize how much I want more JRPGs where the protagonists aren't a bunch of teenagers. I should preface this by saying I'm not against high school heroes in principle. Hell, Persona 5 is one of my favorite JRPGs of all time, but this trope still accounts for what feels like 95% of JRPGs. Yakuza's party members, with a few exceptions, are a bunch of middle aged bums and losers who are in their forties. They're broke, washed up failures. Sometimes they're even homeless. Nobody believes in them and nobody thinks they'll amount to anything, but they're still fighting against the yakuza corruption in Yokohama simply because it's the right thing to do. They're huge underdogs and that makes it really easy to sympathize with and root for them.  In fact, these are some of the most well written JRPG party members I've seen in a long time. More of this, please.

[Mister Jack]

Something else Yakuza related that I noticed recently is that not only do they have both the original Japanese dub and an English dub, but they also did separate lip syncing for both languages. To make it even better, if you choose to play in Japanese with English subtitles you get a different script that sticks more closely to the original dialogue as opposed to the more localized (but still very good) English script. Having more language options like this is fantastic and it should happen way more often than it does.

[toxicitizen]

49 minutes ago, Mister Jack said:

To make it even better, if you choose to play in Japanese with English subtitles you get a different script that sticks more closely to the original dialogue as opposed to the more localized (but still very good) English script.

 

Oh wow, that's really cool. And it means they basically localized the game twice, which is no small amount of dedication. They really went all out on this one.

 

This is also the first one to get an english dub since the original way back on PS2, right?

[Mister Jack]

To the best of my knowledge, yes. They're definitely trying their damndest to give this series mainstream appeal with all this extra effort.

[TheMightyEthan]

Neat, maybe by the time the PS5 version comes out I'll be through my backlog and I can give this game a shot.

[Mister Jack]

I was playing Gunfire Reborn (basically roguelike Borderlands) earlier and noticed that not only do my teammates go transparent when they walk in front of me so I can see past them, but I can even shoot through their transparent bodies without any repercussions. Is it realistic? Hell no. Does it eliminate one of the biggest headaches when it comes to co-op shooters? Hell yes.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, more games need stuff like that, friendly fire sucks.

 

On 11/27/2020 at 8:07 AM, TheMightyEthan said:

Neat, maybe by the time the PS5 version comes out I'll be through my backlog and I can give this game a shot.

 

Update: I am not through my backlog.

[Mister Jack]

Every PC game with controller support should have an option in the menu to manually set whether you want to see Xbox button prompts or Playstation button prompts. That damn X button has messed me up more than once. 

[TheMightyEthan]

I find it amusing that all three major consoles have an X button, and all three are in a different spot.

[Mister Jack]

I've heard that's for trademark reasons but I don't know if it's true.

[TheMightyEthan]

Nintendo was first as far as ABXY buttons go, and yeah it wouldn't surprise me if Xbox flipped the order just to avoid something like that.

[Thursday Next]

Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square layout is a trademark. I don't think the other layouts are, but they may have had design rights or patents or similar. Design rights (in the UK at least) cover the design of something that goes beyond being purely utilitarian, and don't need to be registered, they just exist. Arguably the labelling of the buttons reaches this level so it's a sensible precaution to use different labels. Design rights only last around 15 years (depending on territory), but naturally, once you have adopted a layout, switching to match another layout after the time has expired is pointless as all your customers have learned your way of doing it.

 

See also Windows having close window etc buttons on the right, while Apple has them on the left.

[Mister Jack]

Why in the FUCK do games with crafting mechanics still insist on making me push a button to pick up crafting supplies. When am I ever going to not want to pick up crafting supplies? You should just automatically collect it when you touch it. To me, making you push the square or triangle button or whatever just to pick up some doodad is the game trying to trick you into believing that it's more engaging than it actually is by giving you pointless busywork to do. Unless you are playing a VR game where collecting things with your hands is part of the appeal or a huge Bethesda or Minecraft tier game where you can pick up everything that isn't nailed down, there is no excuse to make you do that. Just collect it by touching it for God's sake. It's not rocket science.

Edited November 22, 2021 by Mister Jack

[Thursday Next]

It makes sense where you have encumbrance or other limitations on how much you can carry (much as I tend to dislike those mechanics).

 

Also if collect affects the aesthetic, eg removing flowers from a field that you may want to remain flowery. But if it's e.g. a "wood" resource that pops up after you have chopped down a tree, yeah, that should be automagic.

[TheMightyEthan]

I'm pretty sure I've said this before in this thread, but Psychonauts 2 reminded me: every game that has a "if you quit now all progress since your last save will be lost" should also have a "it's been X amount of time since your last save". Psychonauts 2 does that and it's so reassuring to see my last save was 7 seconds ago.

[Mister Jack]

Bond themes. I can't get enough of them. Aside from Snake Eater, I can't think of many examples besides this one I was just introduced to.

 

I want to see one of these in every spy or 60s themed game.

[Thursday Next]

I love everything about IEYTD. Really hoping it comes to PSVR2.

[Mister Jack]

Enemy infighting. Maybe it's just me but I feel like this is turning into a lost art with FPS games. While playing Vertigo 2, I found that positioning myself so that enemies would hit each other with their bullets or so that they would wind up in the path of a deadly animal was often quite effective. You almost never really see that nowadays and I miss it. It gives you a tactic besides just aiming better.

[toxicitizen]

10 minutes ago, Mister Jack said:

Enemy infighting. Maybe it's just me but I feel like this is turning into a lost art with FPS games. While playing Vertigo 2, I found that positioning myself so that enemies would hit each other with their bullets or so that they would wind up in the path of a deadly animal was often quite effective. You almost never really see that nowadays and I miss it. It gives you a tactic besides just aiming better.

 

Not sure if this qualifies but I just finished my hardcore run of RE4 and making it so the garradors end up killing all the surrounding ganados without ever knowing where I actually am was just so satisfying in that fucking room right before the throne room. Fuck those assholes! I am not looking forward to doing professional difficulty on a fresh save file...