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[FatHat]

.. to make them better?

I've been thinking about this topic a bit since I think modern games have acquired a lot of conventions and "features" that actually tend to detract from the experience, yet they're now standard.

Here's my list of conventional features that we should rethink or remove, post yours also!

1. voice acting for npc dialog -- It's usually done poorly and I end up reading the text much faster anyway, so it just comes out as a bunch of choppy half sentences as I skip through it. By itself it doesn't really bother me, but it seems like one of those things that also hurts other parts of the game in subtle ways, ie, designers can't redesign quests because the audio has already been recorded. Also you get weird shifts in emotional tone, like a character goes from "what the fuck do you want?" to "HAVE A GREAT SUNSHINEY DAY! ".

2. any sort of exposition through dialog questions. Things like, "So NPC, why are you angry at the boss villain?" or whatever. These sort of dialog trees always feel incredibly contrived. Nobody has conversations like this. I wish someone would take dialog and try to model what an actual conversation feels like instead of just using it as an information tree. Personally I think if a piece of dialog doesn't have an actual effect on the state of the game, it should be left out. Dialog needs to be consequential to be interesting.

3. achievements. The ones that challenge you to play the game in a different style are alright, but things like "watched a cutscene!" feel patronizing.

[s0]

"Handholding" mechanics.

[gimymblert]

FORCED and non optional "Handholding" mechanics.

fixed


But removing them is removing the gameplay because there is mostly nothing beyond that

[unsilentwill]

Achievements, regenerating health, bullet sponges anime, orcs, math problems, cutscenes, custumi$ation, scores, story-breaking co-op, warehouses, world war ii,bikini armor, sacred gems, loreless items, madden, sonic, sex minigames, quicktime events, zombies, grunts, final showdows/bossbattles, guns, tutorials, two-dimensial npcs,multiple lives, match 3, waggle...

[MadWatch]

story-breaking co-op

May I ask what you mean ? Any example ?

[unsilentwill]

You caught me, that's more of a phobia I guess. Also Cactus posted a lovely list not long ago:

-Lowbrow jokes
-Cheesy action
-Women in exposing clothing
-Arbitrary puzzles
-Awful amateur poets
-Poorly done abstract art
-Nerd culture
-Skin deep social commentary
-Cartoony visuals
-Flash

[gimymblert]

Funnily I had a replay of dragon's lair ... and modern day QTE are clearly dumbing this down   There was no prompt, you have to guess which button in time. If they had a health/miss system it wouldn't be different from any hardcore game from that time, if it had branching state outside of simply dying it would have been perfect implementation of ideal qte.

[LDuncan]

I wish someone would take dialog and try to model what an actual conversation feels like instead of just using it as an information tree. Personally I think if a piece of dialog doesn't have an actual effect on the state of the game, it should be left out. Dialog needs to be consequential to be interesting.

While I mostly agree, I'm not sure I get this part. It seems contradictory. Actual conversations are rarely consequential or have an effect on life. I tried thinking up ways for a long time on how to make NPC dialog more like an actual conversation, and then I just realized I was no longer trying to make a game and was really just trying to create a chatbot.

As for me, the things I'd probably remove are little details like...

1) Menus with fancy animations, and you have to wait for 2 seconds for the next menu item to fade in and roll out in order to change your equipment or whatever. I want the UI to be responsive and immediate. Drives me insane!

2) Minigames. My character has a skill of 100 in lockpicking, but since I, the player, don't understand the lockpicking minigame, he still can't get into anything.

... and... a whole bunch of other stuff, that, as I started typing them out, I realized still existed in older games too, so it doesn't really fit the thread...

[saturdaymorning]

How do you guys feel about the minimaps and radars with objective dots? I mean I hated it in Oblivion, and I was like meh about it in Fallout 3, but I didn't even really think about it in the new Deus Ex till they actually stopped using them near the end of the game. At that point, I felt like I had more fun having to actually explore the area. The original Deus Ex didn't have them and I loved exploring the areas finding different entrances and exits.

Maybe I just don't like it in "open world" type games

[s0]

1) Menus with fancy animations, and you have to wait for 2 seconds for the next menu item to fade in and roll out in order to change your equipment or whatever. I want the UI to be responsive and immediate. Drives me insane!

Perhaps somewhat contrary to this, one of the things I hate about modern games is the trend towards "minimalistic" UIs or no UIs at all. I want awesome-looking, ornate UIs like in those old DOS RPGs back.

 

[Player 3]

1) Menus with fancy animations, and you have to wait for 2 seconds for the next menu item to fade in and roll out in order to change your equipment or whatever. I want the UI to be responsive and immediate. Drives me insane!

Perhaps somewhat contrary to this, one of the things I hate about modern games is the trend towards "minimalistic" UIs or no UIs at all. I want awesome-looking, ornate UIs like in those old DOS RPGs back.

This.

Related to GUIs: In FPS games, it would be nice if they brought back the hitpoint stat instead of the new "You suffered lots of gunshot wounds? Wait a few seconds and you'll be all better."

[LDuncan]

I want awesome-looking, ornate UIs like in those old DOS RPGs back.

Oh, I'm cool with that. But awesome, ornate UIs can still be programmed efficiently so they load quickly. I explained it poorly in my post (though the pointless animation thing still annoys me too), but more what annoys me is that the menu is so poorly implemented that it takes forever to load everything into memory.

[LDuncan]

How do you guys feel about the minimaps and radars with objective dots?

I'm kind of torn on that. I feel the same way--I love exploring--but I get easily frustrated when I can't find things that aren't really supposed to be hidden. I'm pretty horrible with directions in real life, so that might have something to do with it. Thinking about it though, I think it annoys me more to get lost in games that don't have clear landmarks. If the game is made so that you can easily figure out your general location, then I'm fine without a minimap. But if every area looks the same and every hill and tree is just copy-pasted, then I'm probably gonna need a bit of help.

Maybe a compromise? A mini-map that gives you general directions? A nearby city just gets listed as to the north, even though it's actually about 15 degrees off north? I dunno. Maybe that's no good either.

[s0]

Related to GUIs: In FPS games, it would be nice if they brought back the hitpoint stat instead of the new "You suffered lots of gunshot wounds? Wait a few seconds and you'll be all better."

Yeah regen health is one modern design trend I dislike as well. Same goes for putting checkpoints everywhere. The combination of those two things dumbs down level design because it turns (linear) levels into lots of tiny, mostly unrelated chunks instead of interrelated sequences of events.

[saturdaymorning]

How do you guys feel about the minimaps and radars with objective dots?

But if every area looks the same and every hill and tree is just copy-pasted, then I'm probably gonna need a bit of help.

I guess that's the main problem though. Bad level/world design shouldn't be bandaged with objective/point driven compasses. The whole directions by mouth bit from Morrowind would've never worked in Oblivion's boring copy-pasted world.

Now that I think about it more, the minimap didn't bother me in DE:HR because it was supplementary. Sure you have a big fat X where the apartment building is, but it's up to you to snoop around and decide how you get in. Everything looked pretty nice too.

[Ben_Hurr]

Related to GUIs: In FPS games, it would be nice if they brought back the hitpoint stat instead of the new "You suffered lots of gunshot wounds? Wait a few seconds and you'll be all better."

Yeah regen health is one modern design trend I dislike as well. Same goes for putting checkpoints everywhere. The combination of those two things dumbs down level design because it turns (linear) levels into lots of tiny, mostly unrelated chunks instead of interrelated sequences of events.

It also makes it so each encounter has to try to kill you dead, instead of say wasting your resources or something.  

edit: Or anything that has any sort of consequence, basically.

[saturdaymorning]

Same goes for putting checkpoints everywhere. The combination of those two things dumbs down level design because it turns (linear) levels into lots of tiny, mostly unrelated chunks instead of interrelated sequences of events.

I feel like qucksaves did the same thing or even worse (f5/f9 spam anyone?). The fact that console games (which I guess is what we're considering modern design) don't have them is pretty cool. Maybe pacing and spacing is what needs to be worked on more so than just removing checkpoints.

[s0]

the thing with quicksaves is that games that use them are mostly not designed around them the way games with checkpoints are.

it's the same problem i have with "handholding" stuff. sure it's often optional but a lot of games expect you to use it and become tedious and frustrating when you don't. especially a problem with built-in "compasses" telling you where to go.

the best use of optional "handholding" i've seen are new super mario bros wii and donkey kong country returns. though i'm sort of annoyed that you can't turn off the handholding completely in those games and are asked if you want to use it (albeit in a subtle way) if you die x amount of times in a level.

[King Hadas]

Same goes for putting checkpoints everywhere. The combination of those two things dumbs down level design because it turns (linear) levels into lots of tiny, mostly unrelated chunks instead of interrelated sequences of events.

I don't know, I like checkpoints. I want a checkpoint after every puzzle/battle/story sequence I complete. As far as game penalties go, having to redo a bunch of shit is not one of my favorites. Of course I'm talking about games that don't have short, clearly defined levels like New Super Mario Bros Wii.

Modern Game Mechanics I don't like:

Day/Night: This isn't really modern but I've always hated when things in a game need to be done at certain times of the day. Even when it's only a cosmetic change it can be a problem since it's harder to see things at night.

Limited Running Capacity: Your character running out of breath. I guess it's realistic but it's so damn inconvenient.

QTEs: I actually think they can be pretty cool but they require a designer to strike a difficult balance. Too many QTEs and they become tedious, too few and they'll feel out of place. Too hard and they feel unnecessary and unfair, too easy and they're just an especially boring form of "handholding". 

[ink.inc]

Get rid of excessive intros/credits. I already know who made the damn thing, I just want to play it.