# Gamers: What gaming advancements are you waiting for? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 17, 2006, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102 "2006-05-17T13:56:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102/41 "2006-05-18T02:04:55Z")
When confronted with such forks, I usually take the main one, the one that will satisfy the game’s prime directives (unless there’s the promise of something super sweet at the end of this road). I then end up going back after the main game is finished and sweet up the loose ends, kind of like the recent Grand Theft Autos. I think i’d like more forks because it makes for more stuff to sweep up after you finish the main game. I wouldn’t really be looking for smiple, easy ones, I’d be looking for some weird, complicated ones with perhaps some specialized tasks. I’m a masochist when it comes to games. I like it when there’s TONS of crap to do afterwards. It’s a good thing when you see “Game 55% completed” after you finish the main game. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102/42 "2006-05-18T06:34:18Z")
Another vote for the Wii controller. Failing that, I’d like to see a return to wildly original and nonconventional game ideas. It gets a bit tiring to see most games end up either as racers, FPS, RTS, or fighting games. I miss the off-the-wall ideas, like _Make Trax, Joust,_ or _Marble Madness,_ and it gets more depressing when the rare bit of modern wackiness comes along, like _PaRappa the Rapper_ or _Katamari Diplomacy,_ just for how rare such games are. ---
**Author:** ![TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/51bf81/32.png) [@TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102/43 "2006-05-18T07:31:40Z")
1. Better writing. It’s pretty astounding how bad the writing is in most games, even games with great stories and decently-developed characters. I just mean really hackneyed and embarrassing dialogue and exposition. This is usually exacerbated by terrible voice acting. 2. Adult games. I don’t mean “Adult” games, but rather games that actually seem to aspire to be legitimate, mature works of art or statements. The closest I’ve seen in years is _Indigo Prophecy_ (“Fahrenheit” for those in the UK or elsewhere). More adults play games than any other demographic, yet we still have a teenage-or-younger approach to content. Why hasn’t there been a game with a legitimate, mature, non-sensational sex scene? Why is the AO rating the kiss of death when “R” isn’t for films? ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102/44 "2006-05-18T09:39:19Z")
[QUOTE=Lemur866] I always thought it would be great to have an online FPS game set somewhere other than WWII, modern day, or some dystopian future. A really cool game would be one set in in the pike and shot era. I’d love to have a game that rewarded players who followed the real tactics of the time, and punished those who ran around hittting the “jump” button at random. So any side that formed into a battle line, with pikemen protecting the musketeers from cavalry charges, and cavalry able to mop up disorganized infantry, and massed musket fire overwhelming individual fire…man, that would be awesome. Too bad the game itself would be kind of boring to play. You have to march along with your unit, you can’t manuever on your own, you can only use your weapon effectively in unusual circumstances. If you’re a musketeer, most times the enemy is going to stay out of your effective range. If you’re a pikeman, you’re only going to get one chance to repell a charge. Either you break the charge, or the charging unit breaks your line and you’re dead. A game that would teach kids why ancient armies stood in lines and exchanged volleys with each other, that it was the best tactic for technology, not suicidal idiocy and machismo. Well. I guess my real desire would be a military FPS where people did the kind of things that people actually did given the setting and weapons. So in WWII, people didn’t charge across open ground, hopping up and down, and firing submachineguns from the hip, and expect to do much besides get killed. No hopping. No accurate fire while moving. Taking cover rewarded. Stuff like that. Or a black powder setting where massing in the open was the best tactic. And so on. [/QUOTE] It’s not a roleplaying game, but battles in _Medieval: Total War_ do work like that. The basic premise is that swords beat spears beat cavalry beat swords, and anything beats archers if they can get at them. So your battle line will have something like spears to hold off cavalry, swords to break enemy spearmen, archers to engage at range and cavalry to stamp on anything that isn’t spears or chase a fleeing enemy from the field. Add in an automated morale system that factors in things like whether or not the general has a reputation for being a coward or a hero (or has just got himself killed), whether there’s something creeping around on your unguarded flank, whether you’re being shot at by something scary like catapults or cannon, and whether the enemy is starting to break and run, and you have a mighty realistic system. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102/45 "2006-05-18T12:47:34Z")
[QUOTE=Saltire] More plot-branching. When I make a choice, it should open up some further choices and eliminate others. In all the games I’ve played, there’s really only one storyline, so all choices go there. Having a complex tree would make a game a lot more replayable. I’ve always wanted to see a science fiction game in which each person specializes in a different function as spaceship crew. The captain gives orders, but only the helmsman can fly the ship, and only the gunner can shoot the badguys. It would require a type of teamwork common in the real world but almost never seen in games. [/QUOTE] One of my favorite games is Crono Cross, precisely because there were several branches. I also love the Fallout games, and Arcanum, again because I can make wildly different choices. The SF game you want is Psi 5 Trading Company. It was made for IBMs and Commodore 64s, which shows you how old it is. As captain, you pick your crew and your mission. If one of your crewmembers bought it, you could sort of take over their tasks…but you weren’t as effective at it as the specialists were. There were other spaceships flying around you, some friendly, some pirates. I loved that game. It’s almost enough to make me want to hook up my old C128 again. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102/46 "2006-05-18T13:50:13Z")
[QUOTE=VCO3] 1. Adult games. I don’t mean “Adult” games, but rather games that actually seem to aspire to be legitimate, mature works of art or statements. The closest I’ve seen in years is _Indigo Prophecy_ (“Fahrenheit” for those in the UK or elsewhere). More adults play games than any other demographic, yet we still have a teenage-or-younger approach to content. Why hasn’t there been a game with a legitimate, mature, non-sensational sex scene? Why is the AO rating the kiss of death when “R” isn’t for films? [/QUOTE] Because AO is analogous to NC-17, which IS the kiss-of-death for movies. [hijack]This reminds me of a 1UP podcast episode where the hosts were whining about the ESRB rating system and kept comparing it to the MPAA rating system, and Hollywood in general, which they obviously knew _nothing_ about. They had misconceptions like thinking ratings board had strict rules guilding them to their objective ratings, when in reality it’s just a bunch of parents (yes, only parents are allowed to be raters) who take in the movie as a whole and give their subjective rating based on what they think American parents in general would rate it. They too didn’t realize that there was a rating in between “R” and the practically defunct “X”. Lastly they were ignorant of the well-known truism that “R” ratings are desired by filmmakers, unless they’re specifically making a “family” film, and thought they were stumbling upon an epiphany that the equivalent “M” rating might actually be good business. Mainly, they were oblivious to the fact that ratings are of exclusive concern to parents, and irrelavent to game-playing or movie-going adults. That means that any opinion they have about the rating system is both pointless and worthless to anyone invovled. I was like, “Why are you idots going on and on about something you don’t know a thing about?! STFU!”.[/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Push\_You\_Down](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/push_you_down/32/9095_2.png) [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102/47 "2006-05-18T17:44:46Z")
If someone has said this already Im sorry I missed it but… I want every game to have a customizable and creatable main charcter. Where you can design every aspect of the look of the character. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102/48 "2006-05-18T18:07:55Z")
Two things in particular: 1.) Peripheral vision 2.) More than two choices when confronted by a fork in the road. ---
**Author:** ![Saltire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saltire/32/553_2.png) [@Saltire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saltire)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102/49 "2006-05-18T18:14:14Z")
[QUOTE=MaxTheVool] But then, I have weird and perhaps obsolete taste in gameplay. Gamers tend to like forks in the road. I _hate_ forks in the road. If I come to a fork and I could go left or right, well, how would I know? I’m just playing a game. It’s not like I have meaningful data based on which I can make an intelligent decision. So I basically flip a mental coin and go to the right. And I keep going. And do some neat stuff. And keep going. And now I’m getting more and more and more and more curious what was back to the left. So I backtrack all the way back, take the left fork, and then start going down it further and further and eventually I start to wonder what was along the right fork. So I go all the way back to the fork, etc. Does that actually make the game playing experience more satisfying? [/QUOTE] I certainly understand that my desire for plot-branching represents extra work and budget for the game designers. I know I won’t get it unless someone comes up with some sort of world-design engine that takes care of a lot of this stuff semi-automatically. But I think you’ve missed what I mean by plot-branching. Both in your description of the castle approach methods and here in your quote, you are talking about minor branches on the same path, which is what current games are like. What I’m talking about is if you decide to make friends with a particular warlord, you have free passage in his area but you can never enter the castle of his enemies without a fight or stealth. But if you decide to stay neutral towards the warlord, he’ll expect you to pay tolls to pass through his lands, but his enemies will still be amenable to parlay with you. If you choose to insult the warlord, you can never go into his lands without some sort of fight or stealth. In other words, on a single play through the game, certain choices actually make some forks impassable to you. In order to explore those forks, you need to play the game again with different choices. It makes the choices meaningful. If you are given 3 choices that all lead to the exact same plot point in the next room, the choice you make doesn’t matter at all. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102/50 "2006-05-18T18:24:53Z")
[QUOTE=Saltire] …It makes the choices meaningful. If you are given 3 choices that all lead to the exact same plot point in the next room, the choice you make doesn’t matter at all. [/QUOTE] I second. This is why I don’t play RPG’s today. MMORPG’s are better, but require WAY too much time. Nothing beats a good GM that can handle your unexpected solution to a problem or choice. ---
**Author:** ![archmichael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bb73d2/32.png) [@archmichael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/archmichael)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102/51 "2006-05-18T19:37:42Z")
I suck at RTS so I would like a game where you can program scripts for units and groups. Ideally you would be able to have a group retreat if outnumbered or casualties reach a set percentage. It would be like the Baldur’s Gate party AI. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2006, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102/52 "2006-05-19T08:45:09Z")
Again, you get that in _Medieval_ (sorry to sound like I’m proselytising…). Any unit will break and run if it takes too many casualties, and possibly under other circumstances (e.g. a friendly unit close by is running away; especially if the generalship in the current battle is poor). Archers can be (and usually are) set to “skirmish”, which means they’ll seek out fire opportunities but continually back out of hand-to-hand range. This tends to mean that if you really want to kill enemy archers, you need to send horse after them, as they can skirmish away from infantry, which keeps them from doing any shooting but doesn’t actually kill them off. Any missile troops can be set to “fire at will”, when they’ll automatically target the most applicable enemy within range and fire as long as they have ammunition. (You often do not want, say, longbows to actually do this, as they can empty their quivers very quickly, and you might have wanted to save them for a more suitable occasion. But you don’t _have_ to set them to fire at will.) Also, units tire if they’re in battle or running around for a long time; heavily armoured units tire very quickly in the desert, weakening them in combat and worsening their morale (so Chivalric Knights with armour upgrades have just as much trouble on desert crusades as you’d expect). And so on, and so on. And I hear M:TW2 is going to be even more sophisticated. ---
**Author:** ![archmichael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bb73d2/32.png) [@archmichael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/archmichael)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2006, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102/53 "2006-05-19T13:48:22Z")
I was thinking more along the lines of “click-fest” type RTS’s. I never had a problem the Total War series because you can always pause and issue orders. I talking about games like C&C or Warcraft. You build up your forces to assault the enemy base. It becomes a furball. You notice that your healer/repair unit is just sitting there or attacking. I would like to be able to tinker with the unit and group AI so that I have the healer units stay X distance behind main force. If unit health drops below 50% retreat to healer unit, once healed re-engage enemy. If this becomes too popular a tactic, someone can choose to program his aerial units to find and destroy healer units as top priority. The only game like this that I know of was Fleet Command. ---
**Author:** ![wonderlust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonderlust/32/7237_2.png) [@wonderlust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonderlust)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102/54 "2006-05-20T03:33:13Z")
[QUOTE=VCO3] 1. Better writing. It’s pretty astounding how bad the writing is in most games, even games with great stories and decently-developed characters. I just mean really hackneyed and embarrassing dialogue and exposition. This is usually exacerbated by terrible voice acting. 2. Adult games. I don’t mean “Adult” games, but rather games that actually seem to aspire to be legitimate, mature works of art or statements. The closest I’ve seen in years is _Indigo Prophecy_ (“Fahrenheit” for those in the UK or elsewhere). More adults play games than any other demographic, yet we still have a teenage-or-younger approach to content. Why hasn’t there been a game with a legitimate, mature, non-sensational sex scene? Why is the AO rating the kiss of death when “R” isn’t for films? [/QUOTE] Thanks for the tip. I’m downloading the demo of _Indigo Prophecy_ right now. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102/55 "2006-05-20T03:36:09Z")
I’m just getting off a long Civ 4 bender, and this occurred to me: I’d like smarter AI. In my experience the computer, in virtually all games, is rock stupid. In Civilization 4, all the highest difficulty levels necessitate the computer opponents actually playing under more advantageous RULES than the human players; the programming simply does not exist to make them anywhere near as smart as a human. You don’t notice this is really simple geometric games like chess, of course, where a computer’s raw power is enough to outsmart most people, but in a big complicated game like Civ 4, or most other strategy games, the computer just isn’t smart. I want smarter AI. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamers-what-gaming-advancements-are-you-waiting-for/357102.md?page=2)