Gamers: What gaming advancements are you waiting for?

Cafe Society
21

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.

22

[QUOTE=Jayrot]

Hey, I LOVE X-COM (and still play it from time to time), but when played in this generation it feels dated and old. But it’s only because of the graphics, not the gameplay.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, certainly. And I’d pay $30 for an X-com with updated graphics (not 3D! Not every goddamned thing needs to be 3D!) and a slightly more expanded gameplay. Add a few more possibilities regarding where saucers can crash or land. Make the bad guys invade your bases from actual ENTRYWAYS - like the hangars. Change the ending from Cydonia to something a bit different.

I’d buy it. And I really don’t buy games anymore.

-Joe

23

A problem, Grossbottom, is that for every person who prefers Morrowind over Oblivion, there is one who prefers Oblivion over Morrowind. Throw in lame-o’s like me, who preferred Daggerfall, and you get the “can’t please everyone all the time” syndrome. I’d like to see more games that incorporate humor into the game. One of my most fun gaming sequences was when Cate Archer was riding shotgun on a tricycle machine-gunning mimes. Priceless!

24

[QUOTE=Saltire]
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]

Not specifically sci-fi, but most MMORPGs have some level of character specializations. The original Everquest was all about specialization - character classes were very different from one another.

The problem is that when put into practice, it’s not all that fun. High degrees of specialization pretty much force grouping. When you have to group, there’s always one or two classes that are hard to find. So you have 4-5 people standing around because you can’t find a helmsman, or a gunner, or whatever.

Later games attempted to fix this by easing specialization a bit and overlapping some types of functions. For example, in World of Warcraft, you pretty much need a healer in group, but you have a choice of a pure healer (priest), a character that can function as dps, healer, or tank, but only one at a time and not quite as good as the real thing (druid), or hybrid tank/healer, not great as either but able to do both at once (paladin). Even with stuff like this, it’s still common to sit around waiting for that healer to show up (or the tank, or whatever).

The other problem with specialization is that if you don’t want to group, you’re out of luck. What’s that helmsmen to do if he wants to solo, but doesn’t have any way of doing damage?

I’m not sure what the answer to all this is. In a lot of ways, I agree with Saltire - it’d be more realistic and a lot of fun to have tight knit groups with a lot of specialization. But I haven’t seen any game that does this without the issues I describe above.

25

Athena, I know what you mean. I play City of Heroes a lot, and those points where one cannot solo and must have certain abilities on a team are a problem. I never said my idea would be popular, just that I’d like to see it.

Also, a starship-starship fight is fundamentally different from a party-party fight. And that’s just the fights. All the other aspects of warping about the galaxy would be very different when all are in the same vehicle rather than moving independantly.

26

[QUOTE=Merijeek]
X-COM did this back in the early 90’s.
[/QUOTE]
That’s not what I mean – I mean a realistic simulation of combustion. Algorithmic fire, every material in the game having combustion properties, environmental properties like temperature, windage and moisture, etc. The level that I’d like to see it at won’t be even remotely feasible for years.

Let’s go back to that barn: You’ve just been in a firefight, and you run into the barn and find a sweet new sniper rifle. All of your weapons have a heat property which dissipates at a realistic rate. If you drop the machine gun you’ve just been using into the straw, you might have problems if the barrel temperature is in excess of the ignition point of the material. If you go up into the loft right away to try out the new sniper rifle, a fire will break out below while you’re preoccupied with that – and the wind will factor into what happens with the fire – whether and where it spreads. The cedar beams’ combustion properties will model the amount of sparks emitted as they burn. If the wind happens to blow them into the nearby wood, the opposing team that’s based there had better be prepared to put them out, or they’ll lose their cover.

A can of kerosene close to an open flame will build up pressure until it explodes and spreads flammable material around the area. A “wax” candle will deform as its temperature goes past its melting point, and the puddle it becomes will ignite when it passes the ignition point, or a burning ember lands in it.

When you open doors and windows in blazing buildings, the rate of the burn will jump up, and you can suffocate a flame by enclosing it.

When we have the cycles to spare to spend on modelling fire in real-time this way, I can imagine a kick ass firefighting simulation would be an ideal first application – but eventually realistic fire will make combat sims much more “simmy.”

27

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.

28

[QUOTE=D_Odds]
I’d like to see more games that incorporate humor into the game. One of my most fun gaming sequences was when Cate Archer was riding shotgun on a tricycle machine-gunning mimes. Priceless!
[/QUOTE]

Then you’ll probably like the upcoming Undercover Exposure.

29

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
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]

Heh. Sounds like Operation Flashpoint in WWII. God, that game was awesome.

30

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
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]
While not completely realistic, Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 has many of those features in campaign mode. You can’t fire as accurately while running (or even standing) as you can crouching. Hip fire is much less accurate. Reloads take forever. All in all, one of the better games I’ve seen for this.

31

[QUOTE=Zakalwe]
While not completely realistic, Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 has many of those features in campaign mode. You can’t fire as accurately while running (or even standing) as you can crouching. Hip fire is much less accurate. Reloads take forever. All in all, one of the better games I’ve seen for this.
[/QUOTE]

Was that any better than the first BIA? Because I thought the first BIA, while doing some stuff well, was practically on rails the whole time.

-Joe

32

[QUOTE=D_Odds]
A problem, Grossbottom, is that for every person who prefers Morrowind over Oblivion, there is one who prefers Oblivion over Morrowind. Throw in lame-o’s like me, who preferred Daggerfall, and you get the “can’t please everyone all the time” syndrome.
[/QUOTE]

Sure, but you can free developers from too much publisher control, leaving them to do what they once did: explore those niche markets and experiment. There’s money and customers to support the Oblivions, Morrowinds and Daggerfalls of the industry if shelf space concerns, distribution costs and a long list of leeching middlemen didn’t infest the industry like a plague of locusts.

Movie stars and directors live in mansions and ride in limos. Game devs live middle-class, drive Hondas. Yet their products can do comparable business. Someone, somewhere in this equation, is getting rich, and it sure isn’t the talent.

Eventually someone will find a way to send that money back to the people who made the product in the first place, and everything from better AI to better stories to sharper graphics should follow. Hopefully.

So that’s what I was trying to say. Technological innovation is great, but business innovation is what gaming needs most.

33

[QUOTE=Merijeek]
Was that any better than the first BIA? Because I thought the first BIA, while doing some stuff well, was practically on rails the whole time.

-Joe
[/QUOTE]
Sorry, what do you mean by “on rails”? The game play is pretty linear if that’s what you’re talking about.

34

[QUOTE=Zakalwe]
Sorry, what do you mean by “on rails”? The game play is pretty linear if that’s what you’re talking about.
[/QUOTE]

On rails like being railroaded.

It seemed to me that it was not only linear, but it was almost like a platform jumping game where you have to go here, duck for 2 seconds, go there, wait for the Tiger to pass, jump over this, etc.

I hate that.

-Joe

35

[QUOTE=Merijeek]
On rails like being railroaded.

It seemed to me that it was not only linear, but it was almost like a platform jumping game where you have to go here, duck for 2 seconds, go there, wait for the Tiger to pass, jump over this, etc.

I hate that.

-Joe
[/QUOTE]
Well, I didn’t play the first one, but while there are a couple of spots like that on this one, there are not that many. Most of the game you take as long as you need to get through any given spot.

36

[QUOTE=Jayrot]
I meant to mention that of course there will always be some sort of improvements to graphics. But as we reach the point of photorealism, 10 or 15 year old games can more or less fairly be compared against current games. At the moment, that’s not really true.

Hey, I LOVE X-COM (and still play it from time to time), but when played in this generation it feels dated and old. But it’s only because of the graphics, not the gameplay.
[/QUOTE]

I have all 3 of the xcom games, and have a spiffy cheat utility that works on xcom 1 just fine=)

it is a fun litle no brainer game=)

I think I need to getit out and play again soon=)

37

[QUOTE=Athena]
No, it doesn’t. It’s supposed to, but Oblivion was specifically what I was thinking about when I wrote the OP.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah. I’m an AI researcher with specific interests in the sort of agent-oriented programming that Oblivion was supposed to boast, and I have to confess that I wasn’t all that impressed. It’s all very well giving your NPCs day-to-day or even hour-to-hour desires that affect their behaviour, but that sort of thing isn’t very observable from a player’s point of view; it just means that the person you want to find is in an irritatingly unpredictable place. What is highly observable are the sort of close interactions that go on - mostly conversation.

One of the most distracting things I found in Oblivion was that whenever you came within two yards of someone, even from behind, they’d say something like, “speak, citizen,” or, “what do you want?” You’d be running through a (somewhat) crowded square, and find yourself followed by a chorus of “yes?” “I’m very busy,” and "don’t talk to me!"s. Sounded ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, I think the sort of programming techniques they (claimed) to use are quite powerful, natural to program, and are likely to represent the future, but I think they were badly used. Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy the game; quite the opposite. But I never really got a sense of immersion out of the AI in the same way that I did, say, from something like the original Half-Life (which I realise was heavily scripted in places, but very cleverly so).

38

[QUOTE=Dead Badger]
One of the most distracting things I found in Oblivion was that whenever you came within two yards of someone, even from behind, they’d say something like, “speak, citizen,” or, “what do you want?” You’d be running through a (somewhat) crowded square, and find yourself followed by a chorus of “yes?” “I’m very busy,” and "don’t talk to me!"s. Sounded ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, I think the sort of programming techniques they (claimed) to use are quite powerful, natural to program, and are likely to represent the future, but I think they were badly used. Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy the game; quite the opposite. But I never really got a sense of immersion out of the AI in the same way that I did, say, from something like the original Half-Life (which I realise was heavily scripted in places, but very cleverly so).
[/QUOTE]

I hear you.

The thing is, they shot themselves in the foot with all the hoopla about the radiant AI. There are some things that are very cool - hearing the people small talk among themselves is pretty neat, especially when you pick up stuff about quests or places of interest. Occasionally you see an NPC doing something kind of neat. All of this would have been cool to experience if I’d have just found it. But they had to market the AI to the point where everyone was expecting some sort of huge leap forward, and it wasn’t.

Even worse is that sometimes the AI doesn’t even recognize the most basic things that are easily scripted. I’m the Arch-Mage now; why the heck do the guards at the doors of the Arcane University say “Hello! You must be the new recruit!” every time I walk by? And why do the mages in the guilds around the world continually tell me about the previous Arch-Mage’s edicts as if he’s still in charge? I want some respect, damn it!

39

There has to be a better way of having a finite environment than impassible walls. In the orginal Half-Life, I kept wondering why Freeman couldn’t simply walk out into the desert- and keep walking and walking for miles and never find anything but sand and rocks. Every game ought to have a “cut and run” mode where you simply refuse to go along and you get to see what happens if you don’t personally save the world.

Have movable objects advanced to the point where you can pick an object off the floor, carry it over verticle obstacles, and set in down in any 360-degree orientation?

40

[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.

[/QUOTE]

There’s a HUGE tradeoff there… I’m a game developer, and I almost always prefer to go in the other direction.

Suppose I have 100 man hours to spend working on the part of the game where you approach the castle. If there’s a linear plot with only one answer (say, throw the acid on the rope to get the drawbridge to fall, turn on the fog machine to generate fog, sneak through the fog across the drawbridge, and then fight precisely 7 bad guys who are precisely positioned in precise places), then I can spent all 100 man hours making every aspect of that particular experience as fun as possible. I can write cool acid-throwing code, and the designers and testers can play with and tune my cool acid-throwing code until it’s fun. And I can position and reposition the 7 bad guys so that little bad guy fight is a well balanced and exciting combat experience.

If, on the other hand, I aim for the ideal where there are multiple potential ways into the castle, ie, fighting, diplomacy, sneaking, tunneling, magic, finding the back door, etc., then any one of those possible solutions is going to have that much less effort put into polishing it, and will be that much less fun.
The only two ways to really make that fun are to either (a) have a HUGE budget and team so that each possible castle entry method is a miracle of polished beauty, or (b) have a immersive world in which the rules of the world algorithmically guarantee that every possible situation has multiple solutions. But (b) is VERY VERY VERY hard to do, and, while increasing opportunities for player creativity, DEcreases opportunities and motivations for developer creativity. I mean, I could spend a bunch of time adding a really well balanced and fun and exciting and unique section where you sneak in through the sewers while being chased by zombie alligators, but if only one player in seven is going to see that, why would I bother?
Now, you might say that I should have a general system which allows all things like castles and hotels and whatnot to all generically have multiple solutions, because algorithmic representations of combat and sneaking and diplomacy and stuff are built into some nice general world-representation system. And that’s doable, but difficult. But then, every castle and hotel and whatnot will feel exactly the same as every other one.

I think a good solution is the one that lots of games use, which is to have a basically linear plot which includes all the main “cool” things, with minor side quests as extras, or have a game plot tree made up of individual missions which you can pick and choose between, but with each mission basically being linear.

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?