If You Could Change One Gameplay Element...

[Asita]

Inspired by the comments about the timers in the X-Com 2 Confusion thread, I find myself curious about the little details in individual games that we'd change if we could. Not the big ones, so sorry things like "the story" or "the combat" are outside of the scope of this discussion, as are industry trends. Moving along though, maybe you don't like the timers in XCOM 2. Maybe you wish that a shooter had cover mechanics. Maybe you wish that a shooter didn't have cover mechanics. Maybe you wish that the boss fights in Deus Ex: Human Revolution had stealthier options. Maybe you wanted Skyrim's Illusion magic to be less direct. So long as you're specific and willing to explain it, I want to hear it. What you'd change, how you'd change it, and why.

So tell me, Escapists. What are the small changes that you would have made to your games?

 

[DefunctTheory]

Well...

Final Fantasy XIII Lightning Returns - Remove the timer. My friend has bought be both FF13 follow ups in an attempt to get me back into FF after my raging, disc breaking fit I had after FF13 prime. He got my Lightning Returns for Christmas. I started playing it, and while the characters were bland as ever, I actually liked the gameplay. It felt better, and I was told it was much more open. I was actually enjoying myself. And then I went to the first non-tutorial area, and I got a timer slapped on my screen, and found the quests had time limits on them.

I don't do timers like that. I hate it. Even if the time frame is generous in the extreme, just the existence of it is enough to grind my nerves and rob me of enjoyment. It feels oppressive, and it just kills everything for me.

Also, I wish I could cut out the Batmobile from Arkham Knight, so I could actually play it. But I suppose thats beyond the scope of this thread.

 

[Barbas]

I'd give at least one nude scene to every character in every game that I own, just to stick it to the man. To allow for this in the budget, I'd cut out all arbitrary stealth, turret and quick-time mechanics. There would also be an option in multi-player matches to make all characters' clothes disappear, because the only thing more absurd than a game of Unreal Tournament is one in which all the characters retain their total seriousness and wall-jumping ability whilst having their arses hanging out.

 

[Asita]

Also, I wish I could cut out the Batmobile from Arkham Knight, so I could actually play it. But I suppose thats beyond the scope of this thread.

I...don't think it is? I haven't played the game though. How heavily does the Batmobile actually feature in Arkham Knight?

Perhaps I should clarify that when I say that "the plot" or "the combat" is outside the scope of the thread, I mean that they are far too general complaints that ultimately lend themselves more to total overhauls than tweaks. To invoke a few examples, "change the ending to ME3" is too broad and vague to qualify, but that does not mean that the high concept is off limits, just that it needs some forethought and focus behind it. A variation which has the crucible fire immediately after the confrontation with the Illusive Man would be fine and dandy, as would the addition of epilogue slides such as seen here. Having it adopt Koobismo's "Marauder Shields" comic, however, would be outside the scope, as it is a necessarily complex change that requires rewriting a great deal of the final act of the story.

Conversely, "remove the Catalyst character" or "remove Kai Leng" is comparatively simple. Yes, the scenes either were in would have to be rewritten, but it's a change that zeroes in on a comparatively minor detail with a broader effect, much like how adding or removing cover mechanics from an FPS fundamentally changes how the game plays.

To put it another way, one could consider the question to be along the lines of a "Butterfly Effect". You change one detail and watch how the ripples expand and change the rest of the game.

I'd give at least one nude scene to every character in every game that I own, just to stick it to the man. To allow for this in the budget, I'd cut out all arbitrary stealth, turret and quick-time mechanics. There would also be an option in multi-player matches to make all characters' clothes disappear, because the only thing more absurd than a game of Unreal Tournament is one in which all the characters retain their total seriousness and wall-jumping ability whilst having their arses hanging out.

Spoiler

(Sorry, I just had to )

 

[Mister K]

In Divinity: Dragon Commander you had the ability to let one of your generals fight the battle instead of you, but only once per turn, with every other battle being forced on you. I'd rather have the ability to delegate all but "boss" battles to generals and have better "legislature and romance" mode.

 

[Bocaj2000]

No ammo for Mass Effect 2. The guns should've acted how they did in ME1.

For most other games, I'd remove quest markers so that players would have to rely on directions. With that said, if quests need to be returned, a marker is fine (e.g. "Who the hell is John Generica in this sea of NPCs?")

 

[FalloutJack]

No. Fucking. Time Limits.

Anything that constrains time, constrains fun. I hate it. I also don't like escort missions, BUT some games have had the good sense to make escorts kick ass and protect themselves properly.

 

[Guffe]

I'd want to play mario games running from right to left, that'd fuck my mind over completely xD

 

[Lufia Erim]

I would change street fighter comboes from Normal link to nornal cancels. The is no reason why anyone should have to practice hitting a button with a one frame ( 1/60th of a second) time limit. I swear it wouldbbe easier to learn how to defuse a bomb.

 

[ManutheBloodedge]

The quest navigation system in Xenoblade Chronicles X. When it gives you a quest to kill x amounts of monster y, the game tells you where the monsters are (Which in a game world as massive as here, is really necessary). But when you get a quest to get x amount from drop of monster y, it DOESN'T tell you where the monsters are! What the hell? I can only imagine that was some kind of design oversight, it makes no sense otherwise.

 

[happyninja42]

Inspired by the comments about the timers in the X-Com 2 Confusion thread, I find myself curious about the little details in individual games that we'd change if we could. Not the big ones, so sorry things like "the story" or "the combat" are outside of the scope of this discussion, as are industry trends. Moving along though, maybe you don't like the timers in XCOM 2. Maybe you wish that a shooter had cover mechanics. Maybe you wish that a shooter didn't have cover mechanics. Maybe you wish that the boss fights in Deus Ex: Human Revolution had stealthier options. Maybe you wanted Skyrim's Illusion magic to be less direct. So long as you're specific and willing to explain it, I want to hear it. What you'd change, how you'd change it, and why.

So tell me, Escapists. What are the small changes that you would have made to your games?

Getting rid of pointless, bullshit sidequests/gather quests.

Gather 100 Flags to accomplish, basically nothing. Do these missions for this npc for, basically nothing. They're just time fillers, and there to give completionists something to do after the plot is done, and I hate them. They serve no purpose, and are frequently mood breaking. Assassin's Creed is notorious for this. Why are there so many? Who the hell cares? Why are they even here?! The first AC game at least had more plot revealed when you found those glitches in the matrix. If you took the time/effort to discover them all, you got a decent little cutscene that expanded on the plot. That was cool, THAT kind of gather quest mechanic I can handle, because there is a purpose for me doing it. Hell, even if it just gives you more exp, like how inFamous handled their gather items. You collected them, and they increased your power pool, letting you hurl more lightning around before tiring. That's great! I don't mind doing these kind of quests if their is a tangible reason, and benefit for me to do it. But if you just have it so I can get some achievement on my steam account, and maybe some lame bit of clothing for an outfit I'll never wear? Yeah, bite my ass in that case.

Amnesiac protagonists.
Look, I get it, you need to have exposition to explain the game to the player, but for fuck's sake, can you please find some other way to justify giving the main character a 101 lesson on everything aside from "I woke up, and don't remember what happened to me." Now, sometimes it's ok, if you actually incorporate this amnesia into the plot, like how Prototype did (or at least the first one, never played the 2nd one). I still didn't like the amnesia hero, but at least they built a mechanic into the game to allow you to uncover your past. Go around, (doing a gather quest), and eat the brains of people that took part in your experiment, and slowly piece together what happened. That was cool, that was, actually now that I think about it, a really good use of the 2 game mechanics that I hate. But most games don't do this. They just slap a braindead hero down, and slap a ton of gather quests down, and just go "meh, that's good enough." No, no it's not. If you can't be arsed to put any effort into these details of your game, I can't be arsed to put any effort into completing them.

 

[Tanis]

Well...
I don't do timers like that. I hate it. Even if the time frame is generous in the extreme, just the existence of it is enough to grind my nerves and rob me of enjoyment. It feels oppressive, and it just kills everything for me.

No. Fucking. Time Limits.
Anything that constrains time, constrains fun. I hate it. I also don't like escort missions, BUT some games have had the good sense to make escorts kick ass and protect themselves properly.

I'll add to the choir.

Except, I'll add, I don't mind them if they're OPTIONAL.

It can be very fun to have a timer to test yourself, but when they're actually HURTING the game by being there...nope.

 

[jklinders]

snip

Amnesiac protagonists.
Look, I get it, you need to have exposition to explain the game to the player, but for fuck's sake, can you please find some other way to justify giving the main character a 101 lesson on everything aside from "I woke up, and don't remember what happened to me." Now, sometimes it's ok, if you actually incorporate this amnesia into the plot, like how Prototype did (or at least the first one, never played the 2nd one). I still didn't like the amnesia hero, but at least they built a mechanic into the game to allow you to uncover your past. Go around, (doing a gather quest), and eat the brains of people that took part in your experiment, and slowly piece together what happened. That was cool, that was, actually now that I think about it, a really good use of the 2 game mechanics that I hate. But most games don't do this. They just slap a braindead hero down, and slap a ton of gather quests down, and just go "meh, that's good enough." No, no it's not. If you can't be arsed to put any effort into these details of your game, I can't be arsed to put any effort into completing them.

I really liked how they handled backstory telling in KoTOR II. The PC was not actually amnesiac though you could be forgiven for making that mistake the first time through. The dialogue around them was intentionally vague to fill in the backstory in bits and pieces for the player without being an info dump. I'd love to see more shit like that. The character knew what was going on but the player wold be close to halfway through the game before the pieces fell into place. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for Chris Avalone's writing.

Peg me down or escort missions. Especially the ones where the sacred person is simply too dumb to live and throws themselves into harm's way. Stealth sequences in non stealth games are also terrible things that need to die in a fire.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Take any online-only non-MMO and give it an offline mode. Games like Titanfall, Evolve, Star Wars: Battlefront, Splatoon...Take all of these games and the many others that you can only play online and add in offline multiplayer supporting at least 4 players (2v2, 1v3, etc) but also bot matches that can support larger matches. Say what you will but some of the most fun I had was back on the Nintendo 64 playing Duke Nukem 64 bot matches. Then there was the Battlefront series on the PS2 and PSP which I remember as being bot-match extravaganzas! It's downright mind-boggling that games in this day and age don't have that kind of feature, especially when Duke Nukem 64 did.

 

[ultrabiome]

I'd want to play mario games running from right to left, that'd fuck my mind over completely xD

Play Super Luigi Bros from NES remix 2. It's Super Mario Bros. flipped and I can't play it as the reversal starts to make me sick after a while.

 

[FPLOON]

Kingdom Hearts Final Mix: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts: RE:Chain of Memories: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts: Birth BY Sleep Final Mix: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts: RE:Coded: [Actual] New Game+

Other than that, taking out the leveling system in Virtua Quest... It's pointless within the grand scheme of the game itself... and not even the blocked-off optional "quest" even come close to justifying its entire existence in a game that's already tell you when you "level up" in relation to the game's overall story...

 

[Spider RedNight]

No. Fucking. Time Limits.

Anything that constrains time, constrains fun. I hate it. I also don't like escort missions, BUT some games have had the good sense to make escorts kick ass and protect themselves properly.

I was gonna say this exact same thing. I HATE timers in games. I mean, I don't mind QTEs (though they can be kind of distracting sometimes) but anything that says "OH HEY YOU BETTER HURRY TIME'S TICKING" and it's used unironically then it can fuck right off.

And before anyone thinks "psht, you just hate time limits because you aren't skilled enough", you... may have a point. It just takes longer for certain people to process things and time limits really rubs it in to me. Unless it's the Riddler. Then he can have all my time.

Also, gameplay elements, gameplay elements.... Oh yeah, I'd take out those goddamn ghosts from Silent Hill 4. Actually, I'm not a fan of things like that in any game (see. Ruvik from The Evil Within): the enemies that are un-killable so your only hope is to go the opposite direction and wait for it to leave. Unless you're a ghost from Silent Hill 4 and HAHAHAHAHA they NEVER leave.

I get that it's used for horror and suspense like Alien: Isolation but at least then, the xenomorph actually LEAVES sometimes and I can double back and loot the area. Having to hurry my ass up because there's an unkillable enemy following me around draining all my health isn't scary. It's a nuisance. Like an escort only instead of them dying, YOU die.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Having to hurry my ass up because there's an unkillable enemy following me around draining all my health isn't scary. It's a nuisance. Like an escort only instead of them dying, YOU die.

This is what I like to call the "Clock Tower Effect." I should be able to kill every enemy I come across in games even if I have to make sure I make effective use of every last bullet in order to do so, anything else is EXTREMELY annoying, especially when there's no actual reason I shouldn't be able to do that other than the fact that the game won't so much as let me try. In fact, if it's a horror game doing this as most of the time it is, I should be an armed to the teeth badass and yet the horror still be effective enough that I'm terrified anyway, that's the genuine horror, not the fake horror created by artificial helplessness.

Kingdom Hearts Final Mix: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts: RE:Chain of Memories: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts: Birth BY Sleep Final Mix: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts: RE:Coded: [Actual] New Game+

Kingdom Hearts nothing, EVERY RPG should have a genuine New Game+ available, regardless of the game simply for the replay value it creates just by having it if nothing else, not to mention all the other stuff that can be added to make it more enjoyable the next time around if the developers care to.

That also leads me into another thing, NO more Hopeless Boss Fights EVER, really really difficult fights that require lots of grinding and skill yes, but no bosses that are literally unkillable. There are numerous ways the protagonists can beat an enemy and still continue the plot as normal without having to stick the player in a Hopeless Boss Fight. If the writer has to have the protagonists lose to an enemy in order for the plot to continue then it would be the far lesser of the two evils to simply have the protagonists lose to an enemy in a cutscene instead of forcing the player into an unwinnable fight that acts like it can be won.

I don't know if this entirely counts as a gameplay element, but silent protagonists is a trope that should just die already. Whether as a consequence it means lowering the number of choices to hardly any, making things mostly text to save on voice work or whatever, there is no excuse not to have voices for every character but particularly the protagonist in this day and age. A voiced protagonist is and always will be much much effective at providing immersion to a story than a silent protagonist ever could, especially if the game provides a voice pitch modification so the player can change the current voice to whatever they want. It's not as though it will even cost much of anything, Casting just has to find voice actors fresh out of acting school or even still in acting school who are willing to work for next to nothing or actually nothing just to get their names out there and spend a bit looking for VAs that are decent or even really good among them. Even Troy Baker was a novice at some point and look at him now.

 

[kenu12345]

Having to hurry my ass up because there's an unkillable enemy following me around draining all my health isn't scary. It's a nuisance. Like an escort only instead of them dying, YOU die.

This is what I like to call the "Clock Tower Effect." I should be able to kill every enemy I come across in games even if I have to make sure I make effective use of every last bullet in order to do so, anything else is EXTREMELY annoying, especially when there's no actual reason I shouldn't be able to do that other than the fact that the game won't so much as let me try. In fact, if it's a horror game doing this as most of the time it is, I should be an armed to the teeth badass and yet the horror still be effective enough that I'm terrified anyway, that's the genuine horror, not the fake horror created by artificial helplessness.

Kingdom Hearts Final Mix: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts: RE:Chain of Memories: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts: Birth BY Sleep Final Mix: New Game+
Kingdom Hearts: RE:Coded: [Actual] New Game+

Kingdom Hearts nothing, EVERY RPG should have a genuine New Game+ available, regardless of the game simply for the replay value it creates just by having it if nothing else, not to mention all the other stuff that can be added to make it more enjoyable the next time around if the developers care to.

That also leads me into another thing, NO more Hopeless Boss Fights EVER, really really difficult fights that require lots of grinding and skill yes, but no bosses that are literally unkillable. There are numerous ways the protagonists can beat an enemy and still continue the plot as normal without having to stick the player in a Hopeless Boss Fight. If the writer has to have the protagonists lose to an enemy in order for the plot to continue then it would be the far lesser of the two evils to simply have the protagonists lose to an enemy in a cutscene instead of forcing the player into an unwinnable fight that acts like it can be won.

I don't know if this entirely counts as a gameplay element, but silent protagonists is a trope that should just die already. Whether as a consequence it means lowering the number of choices to hardly any, making things mostly text to save on voice work or whatever, there is no excuse not to have voices for every character but particularly the protagonist in this day and age. A voiced protagonist is and always will be much much effective at providing immersion to a story than a silent protagonist ever could, especially if the game provides a voice pitch modification so the player can change the current voice to whatever they want. It's not as though it will even cost much of anything, Casting just has to find voice actors fresh out of acting school or even still in acting school who are willing to work for next to nothing or actually nothing just to get their names out there and spend a bit looking for VAs that are decent or even really good among them. Even Troy Baker was a novice at some point and look at him now.

I don't know, beating a boss only to have him win in a cutscenes is worse cause its practically the same thing but you don't feel like you actually lost. Just that the game cheated you to further the plot

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

Unfocused timewaster mechanics. A lot of modern games have sort of a lack of focus and a lot of development time is sunken into something that doesn't really enhance the experience so much as it extends how long you'll have to play the game to beat it or unlock stuff. Metal Gear Solid 5's mother base is the most egregious recent example (especially since that game doesn't even have a proper conclusion)

Other examples include Fallout 4's minutemen quests, and Dragon Age Inquisition's war table and cookie cutter gather quests.