I’ve been thinking about making this thread for a few days. Sometimes, I play a game and it has some very basic features that are just not in every other game and I think to myself: Why is this not standard?! and I wanted to know what were yours.
I’m talking purely about in-game features. I’m not talking about wanting games to have no microtransactions or to be launch in an actually playable state because, while I agree this problem is so large it’s basically a selling when it’s not here… I think it’s a different subject and it’s not what I want this to be about, even if we could talk about that for hours too.
Anyway. For me, it would simply be this. Options. Options. Options. Just… give me more of those. I love me some more settings and ways to tweak my experience.
Here are a few things that immediatly jump to my mind:
Let me move the HUD however I want it.
Take the Sony route and give me a ton of accessibility features, because not only is making sure everyone can enjoy your game cool, but hey, these are not just accessibility features, at the end of the day, they’re just more options and I often make use of them.
This one was actually the thing that made me want to make this post: For the love of everything, let me choose my languages! Let me pick which language I want for the voices and which language I want for the interface seperatly, don’t make me change my whole Steam language or console language just to get those, please!
For multiplayer games: Let people host their own servers. Just like it used to be. I’m so done with buying games that will inevitably die with no way of playing them ever again in five years because the company behind it shut down the servers. for it (Oh and on that note, bring back server browsers as an option too.)
What about you? What feature, setting, mode or whatever did you encounter in a game that instantly made you wish it would in every other games?
EDIT:
I had a feeling a post like this would interest you. :3
I am glad you liked this post. It’s gotten quite a lot of engagement, much more than I expected and I expected it to do well, as it’s an interesting topic. I want you to know that I appreciate all of you who took the time to interact with it You’ve all had great suggestion for the most part, and it’s been quite interesting to read what is important to you in video games.
I now have newly formed appreciation from some aspects of games that I completely ignored and there are now quite a lot of things that I want to see become standard to. Especially some of you have troubles with accessibility, like text being read aloud which is not common enough.
Something that keeps on popping up is indeed more accessibility features. It makes me think we really need a database online for games which would detail and allow filtering of games by the type of accessibility features they have. As some features are quite rare to see but also kind of vital for some people to enjoy their games. That way, people wouldn’t have to buy a game or do extensive research to see if a game covers their needs. I’m leaving this here, so hopefully someone smarter than me and with the knowledge on how to do this could work on it. Or maybe it already exists and in this case I invite you to post it. :)
While I did not answer most of you, I did try and read the vast majority of the things that landed in my notifications.
There you go. I’m just really happy that you liked this post. :)
That could also work with savegames, in that you can have saves, but make the default on startup be to restore where one was in the last game. Many games provide a “continue” option at the top of the main menu, I think reflecting the fact that that’s what a player wants to do 99% of the time.
Two caveats:
If it’s an action game and there’s loading involved, it’d be nice to know when the load is done, since you may immediately have to be reacting to something in-game. I’d rather have it attempt to load the game and then go into a “pause” mode, maybe with some overlay or something indicating the current game state (like to remind you what level or wherever you are).
It’s possible – because we live in an imperfect world with imperfect software – for save games to get into a broken state, and if so, you don’t want to make it impossible to reach the main menu if trying to load the last save game is crashing the thing. Maybe make the game detect that the last load failed, akin to web browsers, and then head to a menu in that case.
Any kind of pause or completion of loading should have a brief moment where you can see the action and get your bearings before it hands control to you. Like how Forza or Euro/American Truck Sim handle loading saves, its paused for a second or so with the player getting full view of the screen then continues so you have a moment to figure out what you need to do
This was going to be my point, the “quick save and quit” option, regardless of how the “normal” save system works. It’s fine if the game only wants you to create a save point you can reload from at certain locations, but a quick save that disappears when you reload it means you can put down the game immediately when the real world comes a-knocking.
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@Plume The Witness has no menu and no savegames. When you boot it up, you’re instantly exactly where you left off.
This doesn’t work for all games, but I wish more games would do it like that.
I dislike this.
That could also work with savegames, in that you can have saves, but make the default on startup be to restore where one was in the last game. Many games provide a “continue” option at the top of the main menu, I think reflecting the fact that that’s what a player wants to do 99% of the time.
Two caveats:
If it’s an action game and there’s loading involved, it’d be nice to know when the load is done, since you may immediately have to be reacting to something in-game. I’d rather have it attempt to load the game and then go into a “pause” mode, maybe with some overlay or something indicating the current game state (like to remind you what level or wherever you are).
It’s possible – because we live in an imperfect world with imperfect software – for save games to get into a broken state, and if so, you don’t want to make it impossible to reach the main menu if trying to load the last save game is crashing the thing. Maybe make the game detect that the last load failed, akin to web browsers, and then head to a menu in that case.
Any kind of pause or completion of loading should have a brief moment where you can see the action and get your bearings before it hands control to you. Like how Forza or Euro/American Truck Sim handle loading saves, its paused for a second or so with the player getting full view of the screen then continues so you have a moment to figure out what you need to do
This was going to be my point, the “quick save and quit” option, regardless of how the “normal” save system works. It’s fine if the game only wants you to create a save point you can reload from at certain locations, but a quick save that disappears when you reload it means you can put down the game immediately when the real world comes a-knocking.