Making a great game better

[Bob_McMillan]

I have a feeling that someone made a thread like this before, right down to the title. Oh well.

So, it's a great game, everyone loves it, it's fans would eat your guts with a teaspoon if you gave it less than a 10/10, and its been awarded GOTY by several sites. How would you make it better?

The game I thought of is Arkham City. I love it, it's so far the only game I've bothered to replay fully. But it has it's flaws.

Number one: character models. The only people who look good are the villains, because they're supposed to look bad. Batman looks purple, his head is too big, the ears are oddly placed, and his biceps are bigger than his chest. Catwoman is ridiculously "sexy", and her hair makes her look like she has pubes on her head (immature I know). Even the alternate skins are ugly. Luckily Arkham Knight's models look amazing.

Number two: There are a lot of moves that Batman can pull of in combat, but there's about three in stealth. I LOVE crouching around Gotham taking out fools one by one, but it can get pretty repetitive.

Number three: The DLC feels like Rocksteady is trolling with us. Nightwing, Robin, the Joker playable? Lol, just kiddding! You can only play them in challenge maps! U mad br0? In Arkham Knight Red fuckin Hood is a DLC (annoyingly an exclusive DLC), so they better not fuck this one up.

That's pretty much it. How about you guys?

 

[FC Groningen]

The Walking Dead:
Give actual different scenario's depending on a few major choices.

Crusader Kings II:
Make it harder for players that reach the stage of a large empire. Like coalitions which would work like factions to counter kings/emperors becoming even more powerful.

Stronghold:
Larger AI attacks on custom made castles and decent multiplayer.

Command and Conquer:
Skirmish mode

 

[Mutant1988]

Timesplitters 2 - Fixed Crosshair and aiming sensitivity settings.

That's really all that's keeping this game from scoring a perfect 10/10 for me.

Timesplitters Future Perfect - Level editor with 4x the memory limit without effecting the performance.

It has a fairly basic tile based level editor, but the editor also has rather advanced scripting tools. Being able to use a lot of scripts and still have enough memory to build a level would be lovely.

 

[SoreWristed]

Destiny :
A trading/bartering system. Many high levels have stacks upon stacks of materials, weapons and armor that players who've just entered the endgame desperately need. Players entering endgame could trade glimmer, resources or engrams for weapons and armor. Or simply my hunter friend trading me the titan armor that dropped for him, for the hunter armor that dropped for my titan. logic.

An in-game LFG tool. I'm not saying it needs to be the randomizer that wow uses, but something where i can scroll through players also looking for groups to run the daily, weekly or raid, and send them an invite.

Push to talk. I don't like hearing other people's ingame sound echoing in my headset, or the horrible nosewhistling sometimes heard if the player has their mic too close or too sensitive. Push to talk, on the L3 button.

Removing the overly long reputation grind. When you enter the endgame, you'll have a vanguard rep of 2, max. And you need to grind it all the way up to four, to be able to get the chance to buy one armor piece. Another grinding session, to get it up to five, and you can buy another one. Meanwhile, the chance of 0.1% exists that something better drops, negating the need to grind any further. To describe what i concieve as a long grind : i played for 14 hours and got just over a third of the way to the next level, and this was using a guide on how to farm.

Remove rocket launchers from pvp. No pvp game is better off with instakill weapons.


Having said all that, i still love this game to death.

 

[Dizchu]

If I could go back in time and give Looking Glass and Irrational Games more time to finish up System Shock 2, I would. That game's ending screams "crunch time". Still my second favourite game of all time though.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Number two: There are a lot of moves that Batman can pull of in combat, but there's about three in stealth. I LOVE crouching around Gotham taking out fools one by one, but it can get pretty repetitive.

Five, actually - Silent Takedown (from above or behind), Double Takedown (two from behind), Corner Takedown (from behind a corner), Inverted Takedown (from above) and Ledge Takedown (from below). Every move has at least 2 or 3 different animations, which as far as I can tell are dynamic. In addition there's the regular 'Takedown', which you can perform through glass - from above or behind - or from below or behind a grate, with varying degrees of stealth.

What other stealth moves would you come up with?

 

[Mutant1988]

If I could go back in time and give Looking Glass and Irrational Games more time to finish up System Shock 2, I would. That game's ending screams "crunch time". Still my second favourite game of all time though.

Warren Spector need to have a meeting with Creative Assembly. The production qualities and attention to detail of Alien Isolation and the world of System Shock. That would be amazing.

I'd rather keep Ken Levine away from it at all costs. I don't want it to tie into the Bioshock universe in any way or mimic it's formulaic and overly simplistic gameplay.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I'd probably complete BioShock more regularly if it weren't the endlessly (and often rapidly) respawning spider splicers in Fort Frolic. Every time I reach the section where I have to kill the three guys for Cohen, I lose interest simply due to not wanting to have to endure all the area those three guys are in. I think the last time I did manage to push through that section I didn't even bother to defeat the Big Daddy in that area until I was ready to face the final boss and was already so powerful that I could effectively ignore all the enemies.

BioShock may have also been improved if they stopped trying to turn the Little Sister side plot into some morality system and had found a way to end the game at Ryan's Office. The former added nothing to the game and arguably distracted from the actual ideas they were trying to present. The latter issue is mostly due to the story sort of falling apart after Ryan's Office. It did a decent job of adding the last bits of world building, but I think those sections would have been better served leading up to Ryan's death, not following it. But I guess they had to set up for the standard final boss that every other game has, so we got what we got.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I just started Destiny, and one improvement instantly comes to mind for me: give the game a freaking codex. Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to go, "New grimoire unlocked. More at Bungie.net." I'm sorry, did I read that right? I have to stop playing the game and go to a website if I want to know the backstory stuff? No. No, that is not okay.

I suppose I've always wondered what it would be like to be able to play Skyrim co op. I think that might be fun, but I don't know for certain.

 

[Ryallen]

Balancing True Vault Hunter Mode for Borderlands 2. Seriously, it's impossible to get through an area without dying at least twice in that game mode.

Believe it or not, I didn't like the romance in Xenoblade Chronicles. Everything else about the game is really good. But the romance between Fiora and Shulk was just badly done. Not shoehorned in like a lot of romances, but just badly done. There was never a moment that I ever assumed that they weren't going to end up together. Their relationship was sickly sweet to the point of cringe-worthy, and it annoys me for them to dance around the fact, even if it's done as a joke intentionally.

Less repetitive combat and running around in Dragon Age: Origins. The only reason that I finished the game in the first place was because I felt obligated to when I started Inquisition. I never even finished the DLC because I had no idea what quests would affect the game and what wouldn't, like in Mass Effect 3.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

Skyrim: ...patch in an actual combat mechanic (as opposed to attack spamming), and it'd be a masterpiece.

Oh, and add a properly written story, acted consistently, and well, by the actors. So, yeah... Skyrim could do with some work. But combat would be the priority.

Mass Effect 2 and 3 are great [if flawed] games, but one hugely important tweak would make both better: make Jack available for FemShep. That is all. Oh, and maybe improve the combat, too, but that's not quite as critical...

 

[Adamantium93]

Kotor: Revamp a few companions to be more interesting (Carth, Bastilla, the Astromech Droid, Mission). Make it a bit more friendly to new players. Give it a better control scheme (something like Dragon Age would be nice).

Mass Effect 3: Tear the game down and rebuild from scratch. Keep the combat. Make the new characters more interesting. Get rid of Galactic Readiness. Make side missions discoverable on explorable planets. Add in a vehicle. Make more hub worlds. Get rid of fetch quests, replace them with new side quests. More varied enemies (mercs from ME2 could make a reappearence). Rethink story (especially cerberus' involvement and the Reapers' justification. Also, nix anything with the kid and the dreams). Have 2 more companions, one sentinel, one vanguard, one infiltrator, so you can have a full compliment without dlc or past choices. Also, replace EDI with something better as a companion. Make the graphics less dull.

Dragon Age: Origins: Better graphics, balance the number of characters with classes (two mages, two rogues, five warriors. Wat?). Let us respec companions. Remove auras in conversation. Probably could do all of that with mods

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Number two: There are a lot of moves that Batman can pull of in combat, but there's about three in stealth. I LOVE crouching around Gotham taking out fools one by one, but it can get pretty repetitive.

Five, actually - Silent Takedown (from above or behind), Double Takedown (two from behind), Corner Takedown (from behind a corner), Inverted Takedown (from above) and Ledge Takedown (from below). Every move has at least 2 or 3 different animations, which as far as I can tell are dynamic. In addition there's the regular 'Takedown', which you can perform through glass - from above or behind - or from below or behind a grate, with varying degrees of stealth.

What other stealth moves would you come up with?

I was talking more of only the Silent takedown, the other takedowns are mostly seen in the Predator areas. From what I remember, there is only one way Bats takes them out, he chokes them then slams them against the floor, whether from behind or in front. It'd be nice if he like did some pressure point stuff or maybe some throat chopping ala Taken.

 

[Vigormortis]

Hmm...

Half-Life - Extend the Xen levels
Yeah, I said it. I wanted more of 'em. And more to the point, I wanted a better look into the structure of the Xen border world and the methods with which the Nihilanth was going to build his armies and invade Earth. It may have even provided better insight into the backstory of the destruction of his home planet and the extinction of his species at the hands of the Combine.

Half-Life 2 - Less 'train ride' and more 'manual exploration' within the Citadel.
As much as I loved the final chapter of that game, I would have rather have explored the vast inner-workings of the Citadel. I would have relished a 'behind the scenes' look at the Combine machinations, perhaps even a look at the capabilities of the synth-creatures only briefly glimpsed on the ascent to Breen's office. Granted, we 'kind of' got that with Episode 1, but I still would have loved to see it in 2.

MechWarrior - True mixture of 'Mech, Vehicular, and Infantry combat
The one thing that the Mechwarrior series has always portrayed so expertly is the one thing the games have NEVER done. Give players the opportunity to pilot or not pilot anything and everything. And with the existence of games and game series like Battlefield, Battlefront, etc, this sad fact is made doubly disappointing.

Sins of a Solar Empire - A story mode, quests and missions, and slightly more robust play options - like turn-based or play-by-email.
As much as I adore this game and it's numerous expansions, I still sorely wish Ironclad had included some kind of story mode. Or, if nothing else, a series of objective-based story missions. The story-verse they've constructed for the games sounds fairly interesting, with the potential for epic narratives, but it's sadly relegated to being a mere backdrop for the aesthetic and setting. Such a shame.

Halo Wars - Bring it to PC
That's it, really. Just port it to PC, please Microsoft. Just make sure the port ISN'T a complete and utter piece of unstable, buggy shite and the modding community (myself included) will take it from there.

Crackdown - See above.

- - - - -

I'm sure I could think of a few more, but it's late and I'm tired.