Rare but relatively simple features that really should be standard.

[Xprimentyl]

When fighting bosses, Boss Health Bars.

This is especially true when fighting bosses who are damage sponges.

I like to know how much progress I'm making in a boss fight. Granted, there are probably other more realistic ways of letting me know how far I've come in a fight, but give me something so that I know how far into the fight I've come. Imagine if those Dark Souls bosses didn't have health bars. All those thrilling times when you were one hit away from winning and then died, gone, and you wouldn't even know how effective your weapons are at dealing damage to the boss.

The bosses in God of War 2 and 3 had no life bars and I remember quitting out of boredom, after swinging away at them, repeating patterns over and over, and just wondering, "Is he dead yet?"

Typically, if a health bar isn?t there, there?s a visual or aural cue letting you know how far along you are. The only time I can remember having this problem was the Warden in Halo 5; I think it?s the first time you fight him in the campaign, but hell, he gave no indication that my weapons were doing anything: no flinching, sparks or ?bleeding?, no visual armor degradation, etc. I didn?t realize I was even doing damage until he finally died after about 10 minutes.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Quick 180 turn like in Max Payne 3 and Resident Evil 4.
Weapon modding on the fly from Crysis.

 

[MetalDooley]

The ability to turn off the jam damage effect (or black and white/blur/whatever) and either replace it with a health bar/meter or a simple notification when you're near death. The blurring/obscuring the screen to signify damage that MW2 popularised is one of my pet peeves in gaming

1. Pausable cutscenes
2. Skippable cutscenes

+1 Can't believe in 2017 this still isn't a standard thing. On top of what you listed you should also be able to rewind and fast forward cutscenes

 

[WeepingAngels]

If there's one thing Bravely Default did right, it's giving the player full control over the random encounter rate. Except from maybe some dungeon crawlers this needs to be be standard in RPGs with random encounters.

It ruined the game. Being able to grind for hours and ignore enemies for hours just breaks the flow of the game. It's a convenience feature but it hurts the game overall. I could meet you halfway with accessories/abilities like Enc-None and Enc-Double but as a menu command available from the beginning, no. There's a reason you would never see it on a mainline Final Fantasy title.

 

[DoPo]

As the player I don't know what's going to happen so I can't predict what will be up next and how to properly balance the difficulty

Every game I've seen that has had customisable difficulty also allows you to choose from the standard "easy"/"normal"/"hard" (or however many of those there are) which in turn adjusts the parameters. Thus, you can make an educated guess what your change would do even if you have never played the game. If you really cannot decide which options to customise, or you just don't want to, then you can always use one of the pre-set difficulties anyway.

 

[NPC009]

If there's one thing Bravely Default did right, it's giving the player full control over the random encounter rate. Except from maybe some dungeon crawlers this needs to be be standard in RPGs with random encounters.

It ruined the game. Being able to grind for hours and ignore enemies for hours just breaks the flow of the game. It's a convenience feature but it hurts the game overall. I could meet you halfway with accessories/abilities like Enc-None and Enc-Double but as a menu command available from the beginning, no. There's a reason you would never see it on a mainline Final Fantasy title.

Don't you mean "I ruined the game"? If you want it the regular way, you can just leave it alone. Plus, many RPG's have lower/increase encounter rate spells and/or items. Bravely Default just made it a lot more convenient.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

I'm not sure it's rare, but clean HUD options. A lot of games you can only clean so much of the crap off the screen. It's fucking annoying and it's a cheap way out of devs making more intuitive ways to display vitality of characters.

All realtime strategy games can actually learn from things like the new Close Combat games (which have their own problems, don't get me wrong) and not having you barely swamped in data and screen occulting status bars and tabs.

While there's a lot of bullshit with stuff like Gateway to Caen, its presentation is clean. It forces you to gauge morale and health of squads in thr thick of it by looking at what's happening, who and what is supporting them, how hard they're getting hit by mortar fire, etc... and guesstimation of how fatigued they are or how many bullets they have by remembering what they've done, rather than having 4 bars and 3 sets of numbers, and a text readiness description ... that individually can tell you 9 different things.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

The encounter rate thing is there to allow you to use it, you aren't forced to do so. The best way of using it is when backtracking or when doing quests or when you run out of stuff and need to return to town without dying. In most Jrpgs, there does exist some kind of spell or item that regulates encounters, mind you, but those come into play later or are tied to some kind of resource, be it money or mp or something, and while not expensive, it's one more thing to handle. I think I don't mind them cause I am so used to them that they're part of what is entailed within a "classic jrpg".


I will say however that I do not dislike systems where you are forced to not turn off the random encounters at least for a good chunk of the game because if you let some people turn them off they will screw themselves over through it, by mainly not fighting enough fights and then getting stuck in a boss and having to grind. I think a good game is one where if you never run away from normal encounters you need no grinding to beat all bosses but they are challenging and not pushovers either (meaning there's not so many encounters such as to render you over-leveled) and I achieve this through most games I play by utilizing good min-max and battle strategy so while I would usually put bravely default in -50% encounter rate (cause the default felt too frequent) I never outright turned them off unless I was backtracking or going through a low level area where the exp wasn't worth it.


I will say it's great when you're trying to farm some kind of item drop however, or kill x number of enemies for that data entry in bravely second, but again, most games do have some kind of "summon encounter" skill too and those tend to not cost nearly as many resources as the ones that reduce encounters do.

 

[DeadProxy]

Proper dialogue skipping should be universal, like in the Witcher 3.

I shouldn't have to sit through anything more than once, but I want the option to skip what I want. So just have dialogue skipping only the current line being spoken, instead of the whole scene so if I get bored I can just mash a button for progress and look for key words in the subtitles to decide to stop or not. I don't want to be forced to sit through something I've seen multiple times either because this is a replay or I've died numerous times and have to sit through a cuts energy for the umpteenth time.

 

[SweetShark]

I saw yesterday some videos for the game Pyre. I am not interested in its gameplay, however I love the way the game had a very easy way to make you learn about the lore it had.

Each time a character spoke, if there was a specific word related with the lore of the game, it was simple highlighted with a different color which if the player hover over it, a small tezt would appear explaining exactly what this mean or what is suppose to be in this world.

Beautiful way to make a player care.
I don't need a ton of confusing texts make it more complicated for me.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I just thought of this rare and simple feature (due to the Splatoon 2 thread) that really every multiplayer game should have is that quitters should be matched up with other quitters, something MvC3 did. Also, every multiplayer game should have matchmaking based on skill, which again is rare for some reason. It's really simple to implement too. The good players don't want to curb stomp newbs, it's boring. And, of course, newbs don't wanna play good players either.

 

[SweetShark]

Oh, now that I think of, do you know what it could be cool?
Cheats Codes.
Just pure, sweet cheat codes. Whatever time you want, just pull out the codes input them and enjoy without care if you are not a hardcore gamer.
Stupid fun or just because you want to pass this one specific Boss or area.

 

[sXeth]

Sort of an expansion on the audio logs, but ingame lore and storybuilding.

Its been a weird trend in games lately to put their world building entirely into loading screens or codexes. Detached UI elements from the game itself. Thats not even getting int o external stuff like phone apps or separate web content (IE Destiny or Overwatch). Or when they just leave it to fan wikis to compile(or make up, often as not)

 

[DoPo]

Proper dialogue skipping should be universal, like in the Witcher 3.

Which reminds me - a way to silence voiced dialogue when you also have it written on screen. I'm mainly thinking about RPGs where you go and talk to a person, you get their words in a box and they also speak them, as opposed to subtitles. It's cool and all, but I can read faster than I can listen. Having both can just be annoying, as I am usually sentence or two beyond where the voiceover is and sometimes they say something that throws me off[footnote]In Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition everybody is pronouncing "lich" weirdly, which constantly caused me to stop reading and see if I missed something[/footnote].

Also something I've not actually seen implemented but I'd love it to be - the option to silence just minor NPCs, but leave the voiceover for major ones. It's how, for example, Morrowind worked - you go and talk to a random guy in the city and they are unvoiced, but you go and talk to a literal god and they have voice acting for all their lines. It made the conversations with major characters seem even more important.

Oh, now that I think of, do you know what it could be cool?
Cheats Codes.
Just pure, sweet cheat codes. Whatever time you want, just pull out the codes input them and enjoy without care if you are not a hardcore gamer.
Stupid fun or just because you want to pass this one specific Boss or area.

I'd actually like to expand on that - not just cheat codes, but access to manipulate the game. So, console commands is what I'm thinking of, but it may take different form, perhaps. At any rate, it provides the cheat functionality, but it is also educational. Can also just be stupidly fun - change some parameters like gravity and you could be playing on the moon. Or you could actually opt in for something harder, if you really wish.

Its been a weird trend in games lately to put their world building entirely into loading screens

Ooh, right, I forgot about that. It's actually one of the things that constantly annoys me - I have an SSD, so loading is really fast. Any information on the loading screen usually flies by and I cannot read it, unless you get a "press any key to continue" at the end. Either don't put information there or if you do then you HAVE TO do the "press any key", otherwise it can be inaccessible. I was actually bitten badly once by this - one game had the loading screen before a certain level contain very relevant tip about how to not lose immediately. Since mine loaded so fast, I couldn't read it and kept wondering how was I supposed to proceed. I cannot remember which game this was but it wasn't an old one - say, in the early 2000s, developers wouldn't have expected SSDs, so having a loading screen that doesn't pause was normal. This one was more recent when SSDs definitely already existed.

So, yeah - basically treat loading screen information as something that won't be read unless you pause it. Or maybe just don't put stuff there.

 

[Major_Tom]

The option to turn off those useless moving crosshairs that cover half of the screen. Or at least change them into a simple dot.

 

[WeepingAngels]

If there's one thing Bravely Default did right, it's giving the player full control over the random encounter rate. Except from maybe some dungeon crawlers this needs to be be standard in RPGs with random encounters.

It ruined the game. Being able to grind for hours and ignore enemies for hours just breaks the flow of the game. It's a convenience feature but it hurts the game overall. I could meet you halfway with accessories/abilities like Enc-None and Enc-Double but as a menu command available from the beginning, no. There's a reason you would never see it on a mainline Final Fantasy title.

Don't you mean "I ruined the game"? If you want it the regular way, you can just leave it alone. Plus, many RPG's have lower/increase encounter rate spells and/or items. Bravely Default just made it a lot more convenient.

Yes, I ruined it but just like tedious side quest annoy those who are completionists, this ruins the game for those who love to get overpowered as quickly as possible. Take for example Final Fantasy 8 where you can get very powerful early in the game if you take the time to card enemies and get magic to junction. To me, that is fun and given an opportunity to grind and become god-like at the beginning of the game is impossible to resist. The difference between the mechanics of FF8 and Bravely Default is that with Final Fantasy 8 becoming overpowered early is not a menu option but rather changing the way you play which is counter to a typical JRPG.

The menu options for encounters in Bravely Default are more like using Gameshark codes on an older Final Fantasy game.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

A few days ago, I moved the quick turn button in Max Payne 3 to key P so that I would never press it again. It was right next to my shoulder swap button (Z). I can turn so quick with a mouse that I don't really see the point. When I turn with my mouse, I don't have to then reposition the camera.

I almost never used it in MP3. But it's a useful features that many games could benefit from. Especially if you're using a gamepad for whatever reason.

 

[NPC009]

If there's one thing Bravely Default did right, it's giving the player full control over the random encounter rate. Except from maybe some dungeon crawlers this needs to be be standard in RPGs with random encounters.

It ruined the game. Being able to grind for hours and ignore enemies for hours just breaks the flow of the game. It's a convenience feature but it hurts the game overall. I could meet you halfway with accessories/abilities like Enc-None and Enc-Double but as a menu command available from the beginning, no. There's a reason you would never see it on a mainline Final Fantasy title.

Don't you mean "I ruined the game"? If you want it the regular way, you can just leave it alone. Plus, many RPG's have lower/increase encounter rate spells and/or items. Bravely Default just made it a lot more convenient.

Yes, I ruined it but just like tedious side quest annoy those who are completionists, this ruins the game for those who love to get overpowered as quickly as possible. Take for example Final Fantasy 8 where you can get very powerful early in the game if you take the time to card enemies and get magic to junction. To me, that is fun and given an opportunity to grind and become god-like at the beginning of the game is impossible to resist. The difference between the mechanics of FF8 and Bravely Default is that with Final Fantasy 8 becoming overpowered early is not a menu option but rather changing the way you play which is counter to a typical JRPG.

The menu options for encounters in Bravely Default are more like using Gameshark codes on an older Final Fantasy game.

In Final Fantasy VII you grind magic from enemies to increase your stats to absurd levels. In Bravely Default you grind to increase your job levels. It's grinding. You don't have to do this, but many RPG's allow you to. Bravely Default just gives you a tool to make it slightly easier. It's not the instant win you make it out to be. Even if you do increase the encounter rate, you still have to actually defeat all those enemies to actually gain anything.

So, what, exactly, is the actual difference?

 

[Zhukov]

When fighting bosses, Boss Health Bars.

This is especially true when fighting bosses who are damage sponges.

I like to know how much progress I'm making in a boss fight. Granted, there are probably other more realistic ways of letting me know how far I've come in a fight, but give me something so that I know how far into the fight I've come. Imagine if those Dark Souls bosses didn't have health bars. All those thrilling times when you were one hit away from winning and then died, gone, and you wouldn't even know how effective your weapons are at dealing damage to the boss.

The bosses in God of War 2 and 3 had no life bars and I remember quitting out of boredom, after swinging away at them, repeating patterns over and over, and just wondering, "Is he dead yet?"

You know, this is a great point. It also reinforces that health bars are an outdate form of design carried over since practically the beginning of gaming. There should definitely be a push to make combat encounters, especially boss fights more interesting than battles of attrition. Bloodborne at least changed this up with phases, and I think DS3 as well. There are probably other games that do even more but I can't think of any off hand. MK9/X have damage basic damage decals for example, which is still better than nothing.

I know these are just games, but bosses need to start showing and responding accordingly to damage dished out in general than a mere "Yup, he's still alive" or "Whup, he's dead now". If I'm hacking away at a glob of flesh dozens of times with a sword, the least it could do is show some cuts even as decals and bleed a little.

I guess this is one area where technology is still lacking.

More complete photomode filters, and a dev. mod even for console games. Some of us really want to see what went into a level or whatever other detail, and being able to float around these various aspects with different on/off toggles for enemies, npcs, lighting, post processing, collision, etc. would be very pleasing.

Dev mode could worst case be locked behind "complete/beat the game first" to make it more of a reward, and of course achievements/trophies would be disabled during use.

I wouldn't put that in my game, and I'd frankly be annoyed if new guidelines forced me to. Definitely shouldn't be standard. It's like a magician being forced to reveal his tricks, and it's more work and money for something that doesn't enhance the game.

It's already in there anyways. Every game made has a dev mode for various quality checks, and all this would do is make it available to players.

As far as revealing tricks, it's not like anyone would see any code; at most cfg's. On console especially the dev magic could easily still be hidden behind a fancy wall that would make Trump jealous.

Mods and what it takes to make them are far more revealing yet no one has a problem with those.

You mean like the debug mode from the Sonic trilogy and NieR: Automata? That's fine, I guess. Doesn't a 3D photo mode require more work, though?

Yeah, nothing elaborate. I think photo mode is just an extension of this. I'm sure it takes more work to put together an option GUI, but still minor effort next to the game itself. I'm no expert though. Someone who works on games could answer far better.

 

[WeepingAngels]

If there's one thing Bravely Default did right, it's giving the player full control over the random encounter rate. Except from maybe some dungeon crawlers this needs to be be standard in RPGs with random encounters.

It ruined the game. Being able to grind for hours and ignore enemies for hours just breaks the flow of the game. It's a convenience feature but it hurts the game overall. I could meet you halfway with accessories/abilities like Enc-None and Enc-Double but as a menu command available from the beginning, no. There's a reason you would never see it on a mainline Final Fantasy title.

Don't you mean "I ruined the game"? If you want it the regular way, you can just leave it alone. Plus, many RPG's have lower/increase encounter rate spells and/or items. Bravely Default just made it a lot more convenient.

Yes, I ruined it but just like tedious side quest annoy those who are completionists, this ruins the game for those who love to get overpowered as quickly as possible. Take for example Final Fantasy 8 where you can get very powerful early in the game if you take the time to card enemies and get magic to junction. To me, that is fun and given an opportunity to grind and become god-like at the beginning of the game is impossible to resist. The difference between the mechanics of FF8 and Bravely Default is that with Final Fantasy 8 becoming overpowered early is not a menu option but rather changing the way you play which is counter to a typical JRPG.

The menu options for encounters in Bravely Default are more like using Gameshark codes on an older Final Fantasy game.

In Final Fantasy VII you grind magic from enemies to increase your stats to absurd levels. In Bravely Default you grind to increase your job levels. It's grinding. You don't have to do this, but many RPG's allow you to. Bravely Default just gives you a tool to make it slightly easier. It's not the instant win you make it out to be. Even if you do increase the encounter rate, you still have to actually defeat all those enemies to actually gain anything.

So, what, exactly, is the actual difference?

I thought I explained the difference pretty well already. Carding enemies and getting magic (you don't have to draw too much, the game offers more than one way to get magic) is a strategic way to play. You can totally grind levels like a normal JRPG and that does increase the difficulty but the game offers a strategy to get stronger while the enemies stay weak. It's not the same as turning up/down the encounter rate in the menu. FF8 does offer a way to turn down/off the encounter rate but you won't get it right away and it costs you an ability slot to use.

If you still think those are really the same thing then I we'll just have to agree to disagree. Breaking the game by checking a menu option is not the same as breaking the game using strategy. Let me just ask you, do you think Final Fantasy 7 would be improved with the ability to alter the encounter rate at will?