I was recently discussing Farcry 2 with some friends and how cool the fire spread system was - And how it essentially was never used again after that title.
Is there a cool feature or mechanic you’ve seen in a game and hope to see more of?
Tf2 nemesis System in pvp shooters
I really want to see a god game with gestures, like black&white, make the jump to VR
The scrolling health bar in Eartbound/Mother
Take a look at Half-Life 2’s old Face Poser software. I feel like you don’t see that sort of action-level control much anymore.
Indie studios are evading the need for lipsync entirely, by making simple models, giving people masks, putting them on radio overlays, etc. AAA studios are overengineering it, putting a $4,000,000 actor in a motion capture suit for each of their cutscenes to capture every fine detail as they stare in wonder at the white ping-pong ball in the studio with the sign written; “LOOK HERE”.
Face Poser was a good median; it’s where the director gets control, but you don’t need a vast technical setup beyond animations, some vowel extraction, and some basic know-how. It means that if the director wants to add a criticism “No, character B should give a dubious, unsure look when character A says that”, it’s something they can apply directly rather than ask the animators to do by hand.
For some reference, old machinima like Clear Skies, or my own “AS” made use of Face Poser.
NFL 2K5 gameplay in a newer football game
Magicka 2 combat in some 3rd/1st person action RPG
Vehicle combat games. Which I guess is more like a genre than a mechanic.
Right now it’s basically Mariokart or nothing.
Grip came out in 2018, but the physics were really unforgiving (clipping a corner could cost you like 10 seconds as you tumble) and there weren’t enough players online.
Which is a real shame because it’s gorgeous, fast paced, with effective power ups, and amazing tracks. And a hell of a sound track.My friend made this top down racing game with guns. It’s free to play in the epic store: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/auto-drive-c2db17
Mods and self hosted servers
This seems fairly common among the survival games genre.
mind sharing a few titles?
I stopped looking into much new stuff beyond word of mouth, last I played was Neither, I think, and it was very disappointing that that didn’t go anywhere. neat that you can still run a server, though
V-Rising, Valheim, No Man’s Sky, Palworld, Enshrouded, Conan Exiles.
Minecraft is probably the quintessential survival game and has a significant modding community.
Minecraft is one of the only constants in my life lol
Destructible environments like in silent storm. You could remove walls and floors with grenades or mines. Unfortunately it was a bit buggy and slow. Teardown is fun, but it feels like a tech demo.
Like in the finals, kinda?
No, it was more a turn based game with npcs, and you had to extract people, kill targets, or return objects from the map. By strategically placing mines on windows or doors you could take out enemies, and remove cover for other enemies, or accidentally start a chain reaction that would blow up other barrels nearby.
The downside was that the game was terrible slow, with what feels like 5seconds per npc to make a turn (even when they where not revealed yet), which is annoying with sometimes 20 npcs per map, who can take sometimes multiple rounds to finish if you are unlucky and miss. And any explosion that would destroy the environment would also bring even modern PCs to a grinding halt. The game was from 2003, but only runs on a single core.
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I miss casual flight sims that were designed to be played with a joystick. Not so much Janes F-15 1997 or whatever, i’m more talking about Crimson Skies. I want more Crimson Skies.
VTOL kiiiinda fits, maybe?
Horizontal progression. Relatively flat power curve, but you gain more options.
Guild Wars 1 is a really good example of this.
randomization of stats, on weapons and gear. i feel like that adds interesting elements, diablo 2 for example.
But that is also the worst part of boarderlands
Fun unlockables by doing some cheat.
Imagine telling a FIFA player that you used to be able to have a dog as referee by doing the Konami code. And it was not behind a fucking paywall.
International Super Star Soccer for SNES had this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYaHPm-yDl8&t=63
Dude I miss unlocking fighting game characters. Now they’re all purchaseable… Like you literally can’t just earn them from beating the arcade mode - that is if the game has an arcade mode to begin with these days
The number of “cheat codes” that were actually just bonus content. Like I remember there were codes in Diddy Kong Racing where you could change all the power-up balloons to any color, like all red or all blue. I also remember there were codes in Mechwarrior II that unlocked a few mechs. Like, there were NPCs in a few missions that were a Tarantula, a Battlemaster, and there were elementals in one level. You could cheat to play as them, but the Battlemaster crashed the game.
Good times.
- an absence of quick-time events (I hate those things in cut-scenes, parry systems, etc.)
- a mode that allows the player to destroy the environment, NPCs, etc. including, when on, making the game unable to be completed potentially. I think having that be a toggle will still allow people to relive older RPGs where you could easily ruin your life without knowing for hours.
- Off-the-wall weapons. I think Blood 2 had a few and even halflife 2
- Counting beyond 2, speaking of the above.
Nemesis system. But
WankerWarner Bros tossed a patent on it and no one else could use it.The nemesis system patents and Namco’s loading screen mini game patent are two examples of why game mechanics and features should never be granted an exclusive patent.
Of course Namco’s patents expired in 2015 at a time when seamless load screens had become the industry standard.
Who knows what the gaming landscape will look like when people are finally able to get their hands on the nemesis system again?
I’m currently enjoying a Skyrim playthrough that uses the Nemesis mod. It doesn’t have ALL of the features that the shadow series does of course, but I’m really enjoying it!
Link to the mod?
What’s that?
There’s plenty of better deep dives on YouTube, but basically it’s a system in Shadows of Mordor (and moreso in Shadows of War) that would take a random NPC you were fighting and were joined by (or almost killed,) and elevate them thematically. If one knocked you down there’s a chance they would pick up your sword and break it, smack talk you, and walk away. That guy, of his name was Doug, became Doug the Sword Breaker. Never time you saw him, he’d get a short introduction and a quip or two to remove you of who he was.
If you died, since you were a spirit they’d just mock that they already best you before. But if you were killing them, they might get a scene where they manage to get away to amplify the story. Or maybe you’ll just kill them. It was random and happened with random NPCs, elevating them in the enemy army.
I believe in the second one you could even mind control someone, and take out the people above them, and have a spy in the upper ranks.
Imagine an action game with some Crusader Kings plot drama happening.
Honestly I think there’s probably enough prior art to get away with using whatever you wanted from it. But a) I’m no lawyer and b) I’m not risking millions of dollars making a game.
Basically a pseudo random system that’d generate orcs for you to meet-fight-recruit they’d have very fleshed out intros
Split screen coop/multiplayer
Way too many games only let you do multiplayer with one player and have online only coop campaigns
Used to be pretty standard that a guest could play with you online
The thing new games don’t have that I miss from old games is friends to play the game with 😭
