We all have ideas of how products could be better. But you're surprised when what you see as obvious has never been implemented. What are some of your ideas that you're baffled you haven't seen in the stores yet?
Mine is simple. I can't believe there aren't Reversed Joy Cons yet.
Meaning a varation of the joy cons in which the Minus Side would have the Buttons on top and the Thumbstick at the bottom and the Plus Side would have the Thumbstick at the top and the Buttons on the bottom.
Yeah, sure... programming. But this would be such an easy lay up for Nintendo. Especially when they have gamers coming in from Xbox and Playstation. Two companies that vary where the left Thumbstick is. You could have Switch owners with any Joy con configuration they use. And who knows, some games might benefit from certain configurations.
Not to mention Joy con sharing. I hate getting the plus side Joy con. I always feel like it's such a reach for my left thumb. A few people I've played with said the same. Imagine how good it would feel if both players were playing with the Joy con that felt natural to them.
I really don't know why this hasn't been done yet. But anyway, what are some notions you think are so obvious but would improve some part of gaming?
The choice, or the realization, that you don't need to put all your eggs in one basket.
Specifically for the AAA industry - not every game has to be a smash hit. You can do smaller, lower budget games on the side as well. It'll still turn you a profit, and it might give your developers some relative down-time.
A pokemon MMO. Like honestly,how is this not a thing? Imagine having all the areas from pokemon be different zones, Pokemon battles in the world, against other players, against NPCs. Collecting all the pokemon, pokemon towers, raids, like come on.
What about a Sword art online MMO. Like the concept is already half done for you.
Not quite the same thing, but there's an Indie game called ECHO where the baddies are all clones of your character and each run they will go after you based on the tactics you've been using recently. I don't know how well it plays. MGSV did something similar with the mooks would start using countermeasures based on how you play.
I don't particularly care one way or another, but I'm kinda surprised Ubisoft hasn't done a Japan based Assassins Creed game yet. The main characters are already fucking ninja, they've hinted at it several times, so why not just go all out with it? And it's not like the fan base hasn't been asking for it for years now.
It's not even the "Too cliche" thing stopping them either, because they've done Victorian London, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and The Golden Age of Piracy as setting as well. If you can make a Pirate-focused game, you can do a Ninja Focused game.
Though I'd personally be more interested in seeing them do 16th century China, considering they've already built a character(Shao Jun) especially for that way back around 2012ish(and they still reference her every so often). It's just weird that they haven't made a full game(Chronicles doesn't count) about her in China considering they've been all but committing to "Main Character Lady Assassin" in a mainline game(Nobody cares about Liberation, though there are legitimate reasons for that). I suspect part of that is that any hint that the Chinese Imperial Government is corrupt/controlled by Templars would get it banned in China and thus not worth it from Ubis perspective.
A usable portable radio in open world sandbox games. Anyone who enjoys these games remembers the walk of shame: You were joyriding in the middle of nowhere... enjoying the tunes... then *SLAM* that stupid birch or pine or surprisingly sturdy picket fence jumps at you, disabling your vehicle. And so the five minute stubble toward civilization in sullen silence begins.
Oh I love these thinktank threads. In the last one I came up with
Squilookle said:
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.
More recently I've been wondering why nobody has yet taken the simple but joyous VR flight model of Ultrawings
[sub]As shown here...[/sub]
And combined it with a simple but engaging randomly generated campaign WW1 combat game like Red Baron was
[sub]As shown here...[/sub]
Simple to fly biplanes locked in air combat- in VR! Hell even those pistols in Ultrawings would work- they really tried shooting each other down with handguns in WW1. Plonk two seats down back-to-back and you could play co-op as a two-seater, or a big bomber etc. You could do the whole Rise of Flight style multiplayer battles but in VR, the combat would be incredible.
I also think it's high time we had a James Bond sandbox game- preferrably not starring Craig. One where you actually get to suss out locations to piece together the world domination plot yourself, and the closer you get to working it out the more random encounters you have where the evil organisation sends cars to run you off the road or assassins into your hotel room or whatever. Oh and a Casino you can just go into to waste time on all the gambling minigames. I also kind of like the idea that you're given gadgets and your super car at the beginning, and if you wreck them they're gone for the rest of the game, which makes events involving them far more terrifying because if you botch it it's gone forever.
I also want a full 1930s Indiana Jones/The Mummy style BR game, where the game area gradually closes in on a hidden golden idol or some treasure, and once someone touches it (assuming everyone didn't die and trigger the regular BR finish) it instantly changes to a 1 vs everyone where the Idol has to be delivered to a far-edge-of-the-map museum to win. Also there's swordfighting and horses and trains and boats and fighters and zeppelins that need a full squad to crew that can be hijacked and stuff like that. Plus you can make your character look however you want in the menu, whether tribal, explorer, mobster, cowboy, soldier, archaeologist, hunter etc etc, and armour stacks in the game, so the first armour you find will always be your lvl 1 outfit choice (say a nice silk shirt if you chose that for example), the next one you find will always be lvl 2 (let's say a safari suit), and the next bumps it to level three (like a swish leather flight jacket if you are so inclined). So you're always building up kit that gets you closer to the ultimate look you have made for yourself in the menu.
And did I mention staying out of the playzone too long invites death by natural predators wherever you are?
Also a game about bank heists that features no high-powered weaponry whatsoever would be a nice change. They don't all have to be like Heat, you know...
Games set in Westeros. For such a huge series Game of Thrones has surprisingly little representation in video games. No hack and slashes, no western rpg's, no big RTS. No nothing. Just one low budget game way back in the day, some cheap mobile trash and mods.
Ever played them? The most "Sword Art Online" things about them are main character designs, item/attack terminology and waifus. And the gimmicky flight system in Alfheim.
The worlds and enemy designs are about as bland and generic as it gets.
What is Sword Art Online really about? Is it about the games that the people play, or about the people that play the games? Most things shown about the games that are used as backdrops in the show are about as generic as it gets, the only identity that the games have is that Kirito and his Waifus walked around there one time.
What would set a Sword Art Online MMO apart from other fantasy MMO's? What do you envision a Sword Art Online MMO to be?
Not quite the same thing, but there's an Indie game called ECHO where the baddies are all clones of your character and each run they will go after you based on the tactics you've been using recently. I don't know how well it plays. MGSV did something similar with the mooks would start using countermeasures based on how you play.
ECHO uses the conceit that the space installation you are in "resets" every few minutes and the clones remembers everything you did in the last segment prior to the reset. So if you use a lot of moves in one reset, you'll get clones coming at you with the full arsenal in the next. The problem, as I understand it, was that it was fairly trivial to cheese this system by just not engaging with the "worst" moves, like running or shooting, that'd come back to bite you hard. Instead you only used sneaking one reset and vaulting/jumping the next, which trivialized the threat of the clones as long as you remained aware of the map layout.
By all accounts, a good experiment that would have needed at least another polish pass.
Hades said:
Games set in Westeros. For such a huge series Game of Thrones has surprisingly little representation in video games. No hack and slashes, no western rpg's, no big RTS. No nothing. Just one low budget game way back in the day, some cheap mobile trash and mods.
Game of Thrones: The Role Playing Game was released in 2012 and is available on steam, Game of Thrones Genesis was released in 2011 and is an RTS (albeit a really bad one from what I hear) and you have Telltale's Game of Thrones game. That's not a whole lot of games, but at least two of the genres you are looking for are represented and from what I hear the RPG is decent if not extraordinary.
A usable portable radio in open world sandbox games. Anyone who enjoys these games remembers the walk of shame: You were joyriding in the middle of nowhere... enjoying the tunes... then *SLAM* that stupid birch or pine or surprisingly sturdy picket fence jumps at you, disabling your vehicle. And so the five minute stubble toward civilization in sullen silence begins.
Not the same thing but fallout did build one into your pipboy from 3 on. And every Metal Gear game from 4 on had a music player of some sort, even if most of them weren't well implemented.
I do miss the ones that let you build your own playlist using music files on your hard drive. Grand Theft Auto Vice City let me do that, but apparently nobody else will.
Gethsemani said:
ECHO uses the conceit that the space installation you are in "resets" every few minutes and the clones remembers everything you did in the last segment prior to the reset. So if you use a lot of moves in one reset, you'll get clones coming at you with the full arsenal in the next. The problem, as I understand it, was that it was fairly trivial to cheese this system by just not engaging with the "worst" moves, like running or shooting, that'd come back to bite you hard. Instead you only used sneaking one reset and vaulting/jumping the next, which trivialized the threat of the clones as long as you remained aware of the map layout.
By all accounts, a good experiment that would have needed at least another polish pass.
I saw it on GOG and looked it over for a few minutes in curiosity before giving it a pass. Partly because I hadn't really heard anything about it(which doesn't happen that often because my news feed tends to land some some rather obscure game reviews in front of me) and partially because I'm TRYING to be a little more discriminating on which games I go "OH SHINY!" and instantly purchase nowadays.
Slightly off-topic, I have an affinity for Indies and always have, and more often then not, been willing to try out some really quirky ones because it was cheap and looked interesting(this very likely accounts for a good half of my backlog). I try to feel them out a little more to decide "Do I really want this in my backlog? It'll still be there later if I change my mind". Besides, I still have a ton of games sitting there I can play and then mention and be assured nobody else has any idea what I'm talking about, making me feel like a dirty hipster.
The choice, or the realization, that you don't need to put all your eggs in one basket.
Specifically for the AAA industry - not every game has to be a smash hit. You can do smaller, lower budget games on the side as well. It'll still turn you a profit, and it might give your developers some relative down-time.
The problem most have forgotten or want to forget so they can have all the money in the entire universe. You can thank corporate greed and the mid-half of generation 7 for that one.
I am shocked no one has done enough online 3d beat'em ups like Anarchy Reigns. It can work, just have a good single player campaign to go with it. Sure, you won't make as much a shooter, but as long as it's budgeted correctly and marketed right, then it should not be a problem.
A crossover fighting game with old-school anime characters (not from the Shonen Jump label). Though this one makes sense as rights issues would be a nightmare for anime like Ninja Scroll or Vampire Hunter D.
Nintendo not porting more of their Wii games to the Switch. There are many games that would benefit from the Joy-Con controls and the HD visuals.
The choice, or the realization, that you don't need to put all your eggs in one basket.
Specifically for the AAA industry - not every game has to be a smash hit. You can do smaller, lower budget games on the side as well. It'll still turn you a profit, and it might give your developers some relative down-time.
In the AAA-space, you can't. There's a reason why the AA and A markets pretty much vanished around 2008-2010, because the ballooning development costs of games meant that it wasn't feasible to develop a mid-tier game estimated to sell a hundred thousand or so copies when it would be put out at the same price point as a AAA game that was its better in every regard and much, much more visible.
The only AAA publisher to have any real success with A and AA titles are Ubisoft and their lower budget titles have been limited to being spin-off games in an established franchise that could be made cheaper largely by flipping assets (Far Cry: Blood Dragon and New Dawn). Blizzard might constitute another exception with Hearthstone (the genre defining CCG) and Heroes of the Storm, but considering the failure of the latter... The sad truth of modern games is that you have the AAA space and then you have the indie/premium indie spaces as the cheaper tiers, with specialist niche games (like Paradox's grand strategy or Obsidian's/InXile's rpgs) in a market of their own.
If you are going to invest upwards of a hundred million dollars or more into a game, and you will if you've got studios the size of Dice, Massive or Blizzard, you might as well go all in and do everything you can to ensure that you deliver a game that will have people watch its reveal with stunned amazement. Because anything less than trying to set the gold standard for the genre is hobbling yourself when each game is make-or-break for the studio and can mean catastrophic losses for the publisher.
A pokemon MMO. Like honestly,how is this not a thing? Imagine having all the areas from pokemon be different zones, Pokemon battles in the world, against other players, against NPCs. Collecting all the pokemon, pokemon towers, raids, like come on.
I literally cannot fathom why this, or at least a Pokemon sandbox RPG, has not once been floated by Nintendo of America to their Japanese counterparts.
How about using all this whiz-bang neato technology we've got to improve sound in games? It shouldn't sound like someone is walking next to me when they're one floor up walking on cement. Half-Life 2 managed to have gunshots sound different at a distance; All Points Bulletin (the game that died twice and keeps coming back) changes gunshot sounds depending on environment (different indoors than outdoors, etc.). But most developers care too much about rendering every crack in the plaster of the bland corridors of their game- you can't sell sound in a screenshot, after all.
A high production values anime-style Kingdom Hearts that literally fuses any sort of anime (not just shonen jump with other shonen jump chars or super robot series with other super robots, anything!).
There's some minor rpgs that do this well but are niche (who here knows of, never mind having played Cross Edge?) but I'm talking top tier level square enix 27 year dev time kingdom hearts tier effort.
So far Project X Zone is the closest to this but it's still using games and not anime, they just happen to be animelike ones so the feel is right but it still is only just a simplistic 3ds affair that still sold ten times more than the folks in Japan expected it to. Imagine someone making a full force ps5 animehearts. A man can dream.
Games set in Westeros. For such a huge series Game of Thrones has surprisingly little representation in video games. No hack and slashes, no western rpg's, no big RTS. No nothing. Just one low budget game way back in the day, some cheap mobile trash and mods.
Game of Thrones: The Role Playing Game was released in 2012 and is available on steam, Game of Thrones Genesis was released in 2011 and is an RTS (albeit a really bad one from what I hear) and you have Telltale's Game of Thrones game. That's not a whole lot of games, but at least two of the genres you are looking for are represented and from what I hear the RPG is decent if not extraordinary.
Meh, played the rpg. It's basically a cheap KOTOR knockoff with a GoT paintjob. The plot is actually pretty good and there's some decent writing in there, but in every other respect the game is just a mess. Visuals that look like an early 7th gen game, lousy sound design, poor voice acting, crappy animation and just subpar production values in general. Gameplay feels just as dated too. Also, the combat will get repetitive and boring, really, really fast.
So ... you're not missing much, unless you're desperate for another game like KOTOR, but you'd be better off playing that again instead, or Dragon Age if you really need it to be fantasy.
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