Things you wish a game dev would do

[Meshakhad_v1legacy]

My first request to Bungie:

PLEASE make a PC port of Halo Wars. Yes I know you're designing it for the XBox. From what I've read, you've designed an entire new interface that works with a console. But please, what is wrong with porting it to the PC? RTSers are PC gamers by definition. I'll let you get away with delaying the PC release by a few months, but don't cut us out entirely.

To Valve:
Keep doing exactly what you've been doing so far. Do not change the gameplay of Half-Life to keep up with what is popular.

However, I do have one request regarding Steam: Include a PDF of the manual with each game.

To Ensemble Studios:
Issue a patch for AOE III that makes the AI competent at naval warfare. And while you're at it, give us a decent diplomacy system.

To FPS makers:
From now on, all WWII shooters must feature some major innovations beyond cooler graphics. I don't mind having a bajillion different games where I can kill Nazis, but stop copying each other. That said, if you have a radical new concept that has never been seen before, and you want to use WWII as the setting, go ahead.

Also, please stop making multiplayer-only shooters. You don't need a campaign, but could you at least allow players to practice on bots? And don't make multiplayer-only content (BF2142, I'm looking at you).

To Japanese Game Developers:
Please run your translations by a native English speaker. Engrish is funny, but it makes you sound stupid.

Finally, to all game developers:
If you have a wild and crazy concept, but you don't know if it will sell, simply include good gameplay, and it'll be fine. If it's sufficiently outlandish, we'll buy the game just to check it out, and then we'll see that it's a good game.

Also, do not include cheesy dialogue unless it is for humorous effect.

 

[Weaver]

Anyways, I wish RPGs and MMOs would stop auto-leveling your stats. The best part (to me, at least) of an RPG is getting just the right stats to make that perfect build.

Unless I misunderstand you, I have to disagree. I mean, I"m really starting to dislike the approaches taken by series like Final Fantasy and Elder Scrolls that are starting to make it so you can turn your character into such a powerful God-like monstrosity, the game isn't fun anymore.

I haven't played a final fantasy game where you can allocate stat points... what I'm talking about is this:

In Diablo you get 5 points a level right? And you can put them into Str, Int, Dex, whatever you want. I don't think either Diablo games were unbalanced. In lots of games, MMOs in particular, it just puts those stat points into your character for you, based on your class, and thats it. There is no choice, you can't make interesting builds. What if I wanted a vitality mage, just to see what the hell would happen?

If a game lets you become super powerful simply by letting the player allocating stat points, the game has failed itself, and is unbalanced by it's own fault.

 

[AngryMan]

4) "Anybody who says otherwise is just making amusing speech-like sounds with their rectal gases". So anyone who disagrees from you is wrong and you own the truth. Well, this discussion is over then, I guess.

Got it in one, good man ^_^.

Seriously though, whether or not you're convinced, I'm afraid that the intent of my statement (that DMC is far better if you actually try and play with some strategy and skill rather than just randomly flailing at the buttons) is still true. Sure, button-mashing may work to a degree, but the game actually only flows properly if you start using the combos and switching styles and playing it as it's supposed to be played. If you get it right, the stuff that Dante does in the cutscenes starts to look only slightly more far-fetched than some of the stuff you pull off in-game.

I'm not trying to call the DMC series perfect paragons of gaming excellence or anything - they have their flaws, not least of which is the fact that every last one of the characters has the emotional depth of a bowl of noodles - but they aren't anywhere near as bad as you're making out. A lot of people still find them to be entertaining. You don't. That's fair enough, and I apologize if I came across as exploding in your face...

But just because YOU find the gameplay dated and repetitive, does not mean that everybody else will find it to be so as well. If you don't like DMC, then ignore it. I enjoy it, so do many others, and I get the impression that the devs have a lot of fun making them as well.

My opinion on this thread is already recorded - developers should be free to do whatever the hell they want, not be forced to listen to the bleated, contradictory opinions of every last gamer out there. All this thread is is an excuse to be negative, and negativity is rarely (if ever) constructive. If you have a really strongly-held opinion about how a game should be made, then go out there and make it or mod it. Oblivion is a prime example of this - people took issue with some of the ways in which the game worked, and so a huge mod community has sprung up dedicated to re balancing and altering the way the game works more to their satisfaction. That is constructive. Sitting around saying "I don't Like X and Y about Game Z" and then doing nothing more about it is not.

When you buy a game, you're buying the developers' vision, much like you buy the author's vision when you buy a book. It may not quite gel with the way you would have done things, but at the end of the day you didn't make it. They did. I prefer to measure things on their own merits, rather than dream about what it could or would have been if I'd made it.

 

[Andrenavarro]

4) "Anybody who says otherwise is just making amusing speech-like sounds with their rectal gases". So anyone who disagrees from you is wrong and you own the truth. Well, this discussion is over then, I guess.

Got it in one, good man ^_^.

Seriously though, whether or not you're convinced, I'm afraid that the intent of my statement (that DMC is far better if you actually try and play with some strategy and skill rather than just randomly flailing at the buttons) is still true. Sure, button-mashing may work to a degree, but the game actually only flows properly if you start using the combos and switching styles and playing it as it's supposed to be played. If you get it right, the stuff that Dante does in the cutscenes starts to look only slightly more far-fetched than some of the stuff you pull off in-game.

I'm not trying to call the DMC series perfect paragons of gaming excellence or anything - they have their flaws, not least of which is the fact that every last one of the characters has the emotional depth of a bowl of noodles - but they aren't anywhere near as bad as you're making out. A lot of people still find them to be entertaining. You don't. That's fair enough, and I apologize if I came across as exploding in your face...

But just because YOU find the gameplay dated and repetitive, does not mean that everybody else will find it to be so as well. If you don't like DMC, then ignore it. I enjoy it, so do many others, and I get the impression that the devs have a lot of fun making them as well.

My opinion on this thread is already recorded - developers should be free to do whatever the hell they want, not be forced to listen to the bleated, contradictory opinions of every last gamer out there. All this thread is is an excuse to be negative, and negativity is rarely (if ever) constructive. If you have a really strongly-held opinion about how a game should be made, then go out there and make it or mod it. Oblivion is a prime example of this - people took issue with some of the ways in which the game worked, and so a huge mod community has sprung up dedicated to re balancing and altering the way the game works more to their satisfaction. That is constructive. Sitting around saying "I don't Like X and Y about Game Z" and then doing nothing more about it is not.

When you buy a game, you're buying the developers' vision, much like you buy the author's vision when you buy a book. It may not quite gel with the way you would have done things, but at the end of the day you didn't make it. They did. I prefer to measure things on their own merits, rather than dream about what it could or would have been if I'd made it.

Oh, now that was an excellent point. Yes, I mainly ignore DMC, but I rented 4 in hopes it'd bring some innovation for the many things I personally didn't like in 3. Except for graphics, it practically didn't, so I quickly lost my interest.

I like this thread because in my opinion, it's fun posting how you'd like some games to be. Also, not everyone knows how to mod. I tried to find a mod that improved the ragdoll physics in Hitman Blood Money and couldn't. So I think it's perfectly valid to tell devs what they're doing wrong. This "you don't like it, do it yourself then" philosophy is broken. You don't need to be a filmmaker in order to say in detail why Uwe Boll's films suck.

This thread is asking each person's opinion and I gave mine. If someone goes and says "GTA San Andreas" - one of my favorite games ever - is a huge stinking pile of shit and name several reasons, I'll leave the person alone unless there's a point that can be discussed peacefully (like whether the game is racist or not. Answer: not). If that person goes and says "Mafia: City of Lost Heaven" - another of my favorite games - has a ridiculous story, well then fuck it. I love the game, I love the story and I'll keep loving it.

So I don't like DMC and I tried liking it, but couldn't. The story is too thin, the humor is too juvenile, the combat system didn't do it for me and the gameplay (go get key for door) is dated. I posted how I'd like the game to be, knowing perfectly well that won't change a thing. But I love writing and do so at the slightest provocation, so there.

 

[hamster mk 4]

There is a lot of hate being spit at the developers here, and I think it is misdirected. A lot of developers would love to do the things mentioned above but finding someone to finance them for a year in order to do it is troublesome. I blame the publishers who don't take risks what ideas they fund, I blame the consumers for eating up sequels and movie based games, finally I blame myself for buying some of this crap.

 

[Weaver]

There is a lot of hate being spit at the developers here, and I think it is misdirected. A lot of developers would love to do the things mentioned above but finding someone to finance them for a year in order to do it is troublesome. I blame the publishers who don't take risks what ideas they fund, I blame the consumers for eating up sequels and movie based games, finally I blame myself for buying some of this crap.

Quoted for truth.

 

[AndiGravity]

I've thought of another one, and I don't think you can really blame me for hating developers when it comes to this:

Stop making games explicitly designed to sell a strategy guide!

I know it's hard to believe if you're a game developer, but some gamers buy the game to just play it, not to buy a tediously overworked D&D-esque map set and guide book so they can prove their ability to sit there and blindly follow instructions for hours on end.

"(Pause.) Okay, now here I'm supposed to pay this merchant for the bones of the seventh sheep from the left in the Sacred Herd of Sarn. Okay. (Pause.) Now I'm supposed to take it over to this dragon here and dangle it from a lamp-post while reciting Jabberwocky backward. (Pause.) That gives me the Blue Genie Ring of the Ifrit, which I can't use because I need to charge it, but it says here how to do that. Okay. (Pause.) Now I'm supposed to press square, triangle, triangle, L1, L2, and rotate my left analog stick 360 degrees. Okay. (Pause.) Cool, so now I can unlock the door to my house and get my 'cloth pants' and start the adventure. Have I been running around this entire time without any pants on, trying to buy dead sheep? Maybe it says here in the guide. (Pause.)"

If I liked that sort of thing, I'd be wanking off to tax forms and accounting spreadsheets, not playing video games.

"Ooh! The new Merck Estimated Quarterly Corporate Tax Payment game is out! Q3! I hope it's better than Q2 was. That one just felt like someone had rehashed Q1 in a slightly different setting. Sure the expenses and months were different, but somehow it had that 'been there, done that' feeling to it. This looks exciting, though."

Do you know how infuriating it was to get thirty hours into Final Fantasy XII only to find out I wasn't going to be able to get the final weapon in the game? Why? Because in order to get the final weapon, you have to avoid opening four chests randomly scattered throughout the world, which look like every other chest and give you no indication you might have just futzed something up by opening them.

There's no way to figure that out during gameplay. None. It's a completely arbitrary feature thrown in there in an attempt to make you pay more than once to play a game you already own. It could not be more blatant the developers were trying to punish you for somehow cheating their precious company by being one of those jerk gamers who thinks they might have paid what they owed for the game when they, you know, ACTUALLY BOUGHT THE GAME.

It would have been less insulting if someone from Square had shown up at my house and said "thanks for buying our game, this is for you", then kicked me in the nuts and pissed on my head while I was writhing in pain on the ground.

Okami was another game like that (setting aside the 'oh my God, how long is this damned intro, I've been watching it for twenty minutes now!' complaint). There are something like a hundred beads in it, and you have to get ALL of them for it to count. One short, and they're worthless... and it's impossible to find them all without a strategy guide because for more than one of them you have to completely leave the flipping game map, worm your way through sections the game developers obviously thought no one would ever get to because they didn't bother to program them completely, and then stop at some arbitrary point 3/4 of the way through and dig at an unmarked spot off to the left of the screen. It's obvious that quest is intended to do one thing: Make you buy a strategy guide to solve it.

I'm getting really sick of coming across games with features like that. It's an absolutely dirty practice tantamount to thinking what your customers and fans really deserve for liking your games is to be cheated.

 

[Weaver]

^Or you can just read any of the dozens of free guides online...

EDIT: Okay I'm coming off as a dick there, I'm sorry. I agree with your points, I just don't think the reason of buying a strategy guide is the reason they do it.

I certainly hear you in Okami, and finding all the flags in Assassin's Creed (as if it's not repetitive enough) is pretty pointless. And in general, I hate things like that. If I miss a secret, it shouldn't be a huge deal. So you miss some cards in Super Paper Mario, it's okay. You don't feel like you missed a whole lot.

I think the whole reason is so they can put "60 hours of gameplay!!!" on the back of the box, even though 20 hours are you running around the world chasing golden eggs for no reason other than 100% completion.

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

^Or you can just read any of the dozens of free guides online...

I agree with his statement, though. Look at FFXII (as the last poster pointed out)... The game has this ridiculous bazaar system which must be implemented to get the best equipment, and implemented means either guessing recipes based on the most vague comments in the beastiary, or looking up the recipes in a guide or online. It's annoying when the game doesn't provide any way of accessing the game's most basic secrets without access to some form of guide.

Luckily I can't think of many other games that do this to that degree. And, no, I don't think it's the most evil thing developers could do. But it is a little irritating.

 

[Weaver]

^His game was made

INFO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_O.K_-_A_Murder_Simulator

DOWNLOAD: http://www.derekyu.com/games.html

It's actually not too bad.

EDIT: It appears the apostrophe has broken that link, you'll have to copy it and paste it into your address bar if you want to read up on the game.

 

[tobe mayr]

1. Ignore Marketing
2. Ignore "Fans" and forums
3. Make game they themselves would like to play. This should help a lot.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

For one, I would love to see a third person shooter that centers around gritty rather than sensational combat with some difficult one on one fist fights and some interesting gunfights that involve using pistols, cover and environmental factors over simple number of shots.

Also, I would love to see an RPG for the Wii which takes advantage of how much random fun could be had with the Wii-mote and use it to have an interesting and interactive battle system ala. Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door instead of focusing on bad motion sensitive games that rely on Wii-mote flailing to little effect.

 

[AngryMan]

Hell, the Wii needs more FPS games. The control system's damn near designed for it.

I really enjoyed Red Steel for example. Sure, it wasn't exactly a standout title - there was nothing terribly original about it aside from the sword fights, and those could have done with being a little more fast-paced and visceral - but I still thought it was a lot of fun, and rather pretty to boot. A raging John Woo-style crime syndicate shootout in a high-class sushi restaurant on the top floor of a hotel is pretty damn stylish to begin with, and this one was both well done, and complimented by some very satisfying weapons and lots of delicate little bits of glass and wood ornamentation shattering into clouds of sparkly stuff.

But I digress.

If we're focusing on the Wii for a second, I'm constantly being struck by how little its potential is being exploited. Here we have a potential vehicle for all sorts of awesome avenues of original design, and what we get is Zelda, Metroid (which, okay, was fantastic, but still...), Brawl, a smattering of Mario games... and pretty much everything else is fairly standard fare that just throws in the wiimote stuff as a gimmick.

I mean, come on, how about a Star Wars game where you actually get to swing the lightsaber, parry the blaster bolts and generally Jedi your ass off via the wiimote? Just off the top of my head, that would be pretty sweet.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Hell, the Wii needs more FPS games. The control system's damn near designed for it.

I really enjoyed Red Steel for example. Sure, it wasn't exactly a standout title - there was nothing terribly original about it aside from the sword fights, and those could have done with being a little more fast-paced and visceral - but I still thought it was a lot of fun, and rather pretty to boot. A raging John Woo-style crime syndicate shootout in a high-class sushi restaurant on the top floor of a hotel is pretty damn stylish to begin with, and this one was both well done, and complimented by some very satisfying weapons and lots of delicate little bits of glass and wood ornamentation shattering into clouds of sparkly stuff.

But I digress.

If we're focusing on the Wii for a second, I'm constantly being struck by how little its potential is being exploited. Here we have a potential vehicle for all sorts of awesome avenues of original design, and what we get is Zelda, Metroid (which, okay, was fantastic, but still...), Brawl, a smattering of Mario games... and pretty much everything else is fairly standard fare that just throws in the wiimote stuff as a gimmick.

I mean, come on, how about a Star Wars game where you actually get to swing the lightsaber, parry the blaster bolts and generally Jedi your ass off via the wiimote? Just off the top of my head, that would be pretty sweet.

I believe that the Wii prot of The Force Unleashed will support that.

 

[hamster mk 4]

1. Ignore Marketing

I agree, since when did "marketing" become key players in the creative process? Wasn't there once a time where marketing's only job was to sell what the creative people produced?

Maybe I'm just grouchy that the marketing guy at my company is sticking his nose where it doesn't belong, again.

 

[wesdabigman]

I wish game developers would avoid spin-offs and cash-ins. Now, I would prefer to call myself an avid game supporter, but most people would probably go with Yahtzee's definition of gamers like me as a "GAMES-R-ART" hippie, but whatever, if thinking games like Bioshock and Okami are art-like is wrong then I don't want to be right =P. Anyway back to my original point, the one thing holding games back from being taken seriously as a medium for expression is all that for every one game thats gone through the polish and work of being a great game, there are another four minimum that rip it off down to exact gameplay mechanics and make about 3/4 the amount of success for being the same game. Originality isn't really that hard when it comes down to it, so stop making God of War, GTA, and Final Fantasy clones basically.

 

[Namewithheld]

To FPS devs:

Read Harry Turtledove's books. Then...make them into games. BAM! A bunch of creative settings with interesting and unique war zones. Who doesn't want to fight in a war against the Confederacy in 1942, in a crazy topsy-turvy world where Mormon extremists blow themselves up in down-town Philadelphia and Canada has been occupied by the United States for the last 2 decades.

Or how about an alternate WWII where aliens invade in a way that's not at all like Resistance: Fall of Man and is actually way cooler.

Or how about a magical FPS where the rifles fire beams of magic, the tanks are lumbering animals with plate mail, airplanes are dragons and genocide is an effective wartime strategy because magic is run by either A) using a power point, B) Using a ley-line or C) slitting someone's throat and powering the magical device with their life force.

Which is why the conquering Algarvians round up various minorities, kill them, then use the magical force to ***** slap the other side.

If you think about it, that is a really damn disturbing way to reload your gun: Knock an enemy over the head, drag him back to a safe place, and slit his throat near a bunch of empty rifles.

To RPG devs: MORE WORLD OF DARKNESS! And not just the vampires! Vampires suck, I want some Mage-based games. Or Werewolves. I'd die...no, I'd kill for a werewolf based game in the World of Darkness setting.

Cause Werewolves are flipping cool!

 

[RoboKy]

I got a couple:

Fighting Games: Stop using over-powered, unbalanced, end boss characters. Make an end boss character with fair moves that has a good fighting AI.

RPGs: Stop using the excuse of saving the world the prime motivation of the main characters. Seriously, how about something different like say, taking over the world (disgaea), not some craptastic "oh my gosh the end of the world/universe is coming, have to save the world/universe" excuse.

FPSs: Add some actual combat moves into gun fights such as rolling/diving behind cover, propping out from cover to shoot, etc. (gears of war is a good example of this). Stop making the majority of fire-fights a continuous string of circle straffing like some retarded game of ring around the rosie with guns.

 

[BuckminsterF]

Use Johnny Lee's head tracking system, Stop making movies off games and for the most part vice versa, Make all cutscenes optional, and try using primary colors every once in while