The Hot Topic Returns

[Maf]

Well I’m no game designer so I can’t say what I want to see from a sequel. I can tell what I don’t want though and that’s the path Super Mario is on. I’ve said it before but Odyssey is Ok and Bowser’s Fury is downright…damn. It disgusts me. Like what are they doing. I was blown away by how awful that game is. Which is not a comment on the quality of it. It’s well made. But just it being what it is makes me like ? 
 

What are you doing to Super Mario I’d rather see him retired and never another mainline Mario game made than reduced to this open world repeat generic mission until death style video game. Mario is above other video games. Don’t make them like everything else is made. 
 

Get the fuck. Get the fuck. Daaaah.

 

I hate it. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Franchise is a weird and dumb word that makes me think about restaurants, so I'm just going to talk about Dragon's Dogma II which is definitely not a franchise cause it's one game. Well, it's two games technically, they made a pretty decent MMO apparently but that's gone now.

 

What I want for that is more of the same but bigger. I want them to take that Warrior vocation and actually give it more than 3 skills. If japanese games developers love Guts so much then why did they turn the Berserk vocation into the worst one in the first game. I also want them to double down on obscure mechanics in the game like how you can one-shot a griffon with a charged up attack from the Warrior, or the cancel skill that strider had (I think that's the vocation's name)

 

I'd like to see them go a bit more BOTW with some of the open world systems as well. Not like hang gliding off cliffs or anything but maybe a fire mage can cause fire to spread and cause interesting environment interactions that just go on and on. It would also make enchanting your weapons in that game more interesting.

 

Really tho they just need to stick to the same formula as the first one and maybe improve things like the world design, some small mechanical adjustments and fix the damage scaling issues with daggers. As for the story they shouldn't put much work into it, cause it's not as important as these other areas. Also it's the dmc developers, so they can't write a story for shit. But they good at action and big fights

[spatular]

In the new halo, im mainly interested in the small scale multiplayer mode - id increase the radar range, and some less important changes - take out the running punch move, and add some more classic halo multiplayer game modes.

 

forza horizon - change the structure so you can pick races from a menu if you want, add some proper tracks with limits, and some rallying.

[Maryokutai]

I doubt Beyond Good & Evil counts but I wish BG&E2 was literally anything else than what they've shown so far. It's just one of those nonsensical projects where it has the same name as another game released prior but has absolutely nothing to do with it conceptually. Should have just gone with a new IP and make a proper low-budget BG&E2 in exactly the same vein as the first one, because only Nintendo and a couple of indie developers are making games like that anymore.

 

Not sure what else to add. I keep reading Nintendo "doesn't know" what to do with F-Zero. Well, here's an idea: make cool new tracks and let people drive around on these with fast gliders, one of which is being piloted by Captain Falcon. Reddit comes up with some absurd ideas like this series would need to be open world and have third-person bounty hunter missions and whatnot. Yeah, no, that's BG&E2 all over again.

[OCH]

I'd love to see sequels to games that were previously limited by technical restraints. Blast Corps or Solar Jetman by Rareware, for example, immediately came to mind. Chu Chu Rocket, Puzzle Quest, Jersey Devil. Stuff like that.

[OCH]

As an aside, mostly within Fighting Games, when did "sequel" become a dirty word? The expansions, Season Passes, DLC etc I don't get it? You want a game with an expanded roster, that's what the sequel was for. Much like fixing gameplay issues. The current mindset seems to mimic Capcom's old school approach to the half a dozen or so iterations of Street Fighter 2.

[Maryokutai]

With FG it's basically backwards to how it used to be. After four or five years of DLC the games have rosters between 30 and 40 characters and then they announce the sequel which launches with 16, ready to be completed over time with DLC again. I'm aware you can't just keep adding and that something like Smash Bros. is unthinkable for a third-party studio, but it's still not a model I'm particularly happy with, at least not in the way it's currently being handled with characters costing money (= entry barrier). But seeing how quickly it went from creating backlash (SCIV, SFxTekken) to being widely accepted (everything from last-gen) it doesn't look like it's going anywhere. Which means one or two fighting games per generation per company in the future.

[OCH]

8 minutes ago, Maryokutai said:

seeing how quickly it went from creating backlash (SCIV, SFxTekken) to being widely accepted (everything from last-gen)

This part, much like the rise of DLC in the PS360 era and how widespread it became adopted, so quickly. It still puzzles me to this day. Maybe due to being largely absent during this era of gaming, would be why I can't get my head around its popularity.

[shinymcshine]

It'd be great to have a sequel that picks up from where your character had developed to (and the skills you'd picked up) rather that starting from scratch every time.

 

I guess the issue is how this might affect 'new' sales, but in something like the Elder Scrolls games, or Assassin's Creed, or even LoZ or Mario, it'd be fabulous to pick up from where you'd left off in a previous game.

[OCH]

7 minutes ago, shinymcshine said:

It'd be great to have a sequel that picks up from where your character had developed to (and the skills you'd picked up) rather that starting from scratch every time.

 

I guess the issue is how this might affect 'new' sales, but in something like the Elder Scrolls games, or Assassin's Creed, or even LoZ or Mario, it'd be fabulous to pick up from where you'd left off in a previous game.

I suppose that is where the whole NG+ concept stems from?

[AndyKurosaki]

It’s a tough one. Changes in a sequel can go either way. Sometimes they can bring a new audience, and the game thrives. But you also run the risk of breaking what made the game work in the first place (Yakuza).

[shinymcshine]

1 hour ago, OCH said:

I suppose that is where the whole NG+ concept stems from?

 

I was thinking about NG+ as I typed, but it's restricted to replays of an existing game rather than part of a sequel, picking up from where you'd left off.

[OCH]

That's true. They do make a point of teasing that, in games like Metroid Prime and God of War 2. Only to strip your end game stuff from you almost immediately.

 

 

[Sly Reflex]

I think for me The Elder Scrolls needs to shake up pretty much everything they do.

 

From the top the way the games stats needs sorting. I know it's traditional to start being a prisoner, but it's boring, and my god are the starts of these games dull. I'd bin it off entirely and make each race/class have their own start. It makes more sense this way. Imagine if you were an Imperial class at the start of Skyrim? You got caught sneaking across the border? The Imperials want Imperials there to fight the civil war. It makes no sense. You should be riding the horse there if anything.

 

There's mods on PC (and presumably consoles as well?) where you get to pick out a back story as well as build you character. You can start as a Necromancer with a few conjuring spells, or a hunter in the wilderness with nothing but a bow, a dagger and a few skins in your inventory. You can even start fresh of the boat in highborn clothes and a purse full of septims and nothing else. This is how these games should start.

 

Make races more unique. Sure they have perks on them now, but they're ignorable at best and none existent at worst. Make these perks game changers. You're a Nord? Cold no longer saps your stamina. You're a High Elf? If you empty your mana pool, it instantly refills and then fast charges for 20 second and then has a 20 minute cooldown. You're an Orc? If you get near death you become more resilient and deal more damage. None of these should be fiddly to use, they should just be automatic. Less menu diving, more automation.

 

The combat is arse and needs a complete evolution to come onto par with more action based games. Obviously there's only so many buttons on a pad/keyboard and mouse, but I think if I was to sit down and design a combat system it would be a standard as it is now, unless you draw a weapon at which point all the buttons change and allow you to do all of the things you are doing in action based combat games, as well as you standard hits and blocks, this method frees up buttons for grabs, rolls, weapon switches and all the other stuff you might want to spec into. This means that if you really want to, you can put a weapon on each button, a spell on every button or even have new mechanics like throwing knives on buttons. I think this would eliminate the way a lot of people fall into the stealth archer class, since doing that mega damage from stealth is the META when it comes to fighting. You have to make all the ways of combat viable, making the other ways of playing more tolerable than just clicking should do this.

 

Perks system as we know it isn't very good. Again it's saved by mods like Ordinator, but this has issues itself. Like they did from Oblivion to Skyrim, they need to merge some of the trees into one. Most notably the lockpicking and pickpocket skill. Do an ESO and merge them into a legerdemain skill tree and take all the shite out. There's way too much rubbish in the trees that are actually good, these skills need to scale with end game or be game changers. I think the way Ordinator deals with it by multiplying the skills by the number of the skill and the points invested mean even novice skills can pack a punch, which is how it should be. Don't fear the man that practiced a thousand attacks, fear the man that practiced the same attack one thousand times.

 

Return to the going to bed to level up, mainly for a few reasons. Reinforce the fact that acting out your daily business is the best way to level and grow your character. I'll wager that there's people that never ever used any of the food, drinks or beds in the game and there's a reason for that, because they're poorly balanced. Make sleep integral to getting the best out of the game, but improve them as well. Make everything level and regenerate quicker when well rested, as well as making you hit harder. As you tire you shouldn't be able to carry on as if you have, unless you've taken a perk like Vampirism.

 

Balance food and drink against potions. Food and drink in TESV is dogshit. You can carry around god knows how many petals at minimal weight which alter to 0.5 units of weight of healing/stam/magika potions. I think the worst potion you can make is something like 20 points of whatever for this price. Now look at the weights of the ingredients for food and drink. Some of the ingredients go up to 5 in weight and when you make them they provide less continence than just chugging a potion and the meals don't scale through levelling. So what I would like to see is make the food and drink a long term buff that provides noticeable differences to not eating, as well as a wellbeing skill tree that allows you to make benefits of looking after yourself. You could totally ignore it if you want, but sword swings might not connect as well, aiming arrows might be harder and not shoot as far and you might make noises as you try to stealth about with give away yawns.

 

Make the map nicer to move about and reflect who you are as a character. Are you a sneaky acrobatic thief? Well, you can enter those buildings via the upper window, just climb up there. Are you a pyromancer? Well you can set the map on fire. You're a big burly brawler? Well fuck those doors, just knock them off the hinges instead of picking the locks. Allow players to slide along the floor, parkour across the rooftops, man handle enemies off ledges and cliffs. Make it so you can get on bigger enemies and attack them or make them commit errors that will hurt them. 

 

Imagine the scenario. You come to a ravine and there's a big log over it. In the middle of the log stands a big burly guy that won't let you cross. Depending on how you play, you have loads of options. You could go right up to him, pick him up by the lapels and throw him off. You could blow him off with a spell. Make him fall off with and arrow to the leg, talk him out of the confrontation, or go under the log like a monkey, maybe even pull him to his death should you want to.

 

Make everything climbable. Depending on your skill and equipment depends on how good you are at it.

 

Do not allow the player to craft gear that surpasses anything in game. Sure, make game breaking loot in the game, but it has to be played for to get. Grinding out at a work bench to get god items is not fun. Using them is though. 

 

Completely overhaul the soul gem stuff. Make everything work as it does like enchanted armour does now. I hate having to recharge weapons and as a result I can count how many times I've used staffs and magical items that have usage charges on them. Either move to mana bars that recharge over time on their own, or make the loot have a chance to do the thing it's meant to do on a percentage strike. So instead of a fire sword doing fire each hit for 20 hits, give it a 5% chance to light someone up on a blow.

 

DO NOT allow players to do every single guild in the game in one hit. Have requirements before they'll even let you join. And I'm not talking about the "Oh, show me a flames spell and I'll let you into the college of Winterhold" nonsense. I'm talking you need stats here here and here. You either have them or you can fuck off. Oh? you joined a rival faction guild? Well you can fuck off just for that. We don't want your sort around here. Also none of this "Oh, you've been here a few minutes now, I guess you can be guild leader" stuff either. Working up the ranks in these guilds should have tangible benefits, maybe even their own skill trees and equipment.

 

Overhaul afflictions. Specifically Vampirism and Lycanthropy. Neither have been done well in TES games. I'd maybe consider having guilds for both of these factions. Make them decisions you need to carefully think over. Vampirism makes you more prone to fire damage and fucks you up in the day, but you get stronger at night. You also get stronger. Werewolves really only have the ability not to pick up things or use levers and gain a weakness to silver weapon, which are pretty rare. Even then the two alternate styles of play are pretty fucking pointless, more should be done to make them stronger but also have weaknesses as well as having things to contend with such as been found out by people hunting them.

 

Bring back the more granular way of wearing armour and clothes. Have set bonuses for wearing full sets of corresponding armour. Allow clothes to be worn over or under the armours. Allow these armours and clothes to flag you as allies or enemies of factions like in Fallout: New Vegas.

 

Handle prestiging skill lines better. I'm thinking along the lines of each time you prestige a skill line, you get a 2% base stat locked in each time OR it levels up quicker next time each time, because the way it works now is that you go back down to 0 skill, get all your perks refunded and it hobbles you. Like, there's literally no reason you'd prestige a skill you were relying on to stay alive because it makes the game unplayable. Sure prestige a skill you have as a secondary that you only use occasionally, but the way it works now is some skills you max out and never touch after that because doing so would be to your detriment.

 

Finally, smooth out difficulty. Make it as easy as possibly can be right up to the hardest it can possibly be. Cater for the weekend warrior and the min maxers. Lower difficulties should be able to put whatever wherever and see the end credits, but more seasoned players should be looking at putting builds together and thinking outside the box to get things done. You have to remember that people are all playing for their own reasons, some are playing to look at scenery and enjoy a story, others are playing to show the game who's boss.

 

All this isn't even all what I would consider doing for the series. I do have a google doc somewhere with a load of thoughts about the game series on where it is strongest and where it falters and what I'd try to attempt to get it back on the path it should be. It's all I can be bothered typing right now though.

[Maryokutai]

I really liked the first Dragon Age's approach to prologues, where every race and class had a different scenario, with even some unique areas to them. Really made it feel like you're playing a character of that world instead of some entity that manifested after we pressed start.

 

Would be nice to see more western RPGs with free character creation embrace that. But unfortunately I can also see why they don't because it's ultimately a lot of extra work that a lot of people simply won't see.

[one-armed dwarf]

16 hours ago, Sly Reflex said:

DO NOT allow players to do every single guild in the game in one hit. Have requirements before they'll even let you join. And I'm not talking about the "Oh, show me a flames spell and I'll let you into the college of Winterhold" nonsense. I'm talking you need stats here here and here. You either have them or you can fuck off. Oh? you joined a rival faction guild? Well you can fuck off just for that. We don't want your sort around here. Also none of this "Oh, you've been here a few minutes now, I guess you can be guild leader" stuff either. Working up the ranks in these guilds should have tangible benefits, maybe even their own skill trees and equipment.

 

This is stuff which put me off playing the games after a while, there is a sense of no friction in Bethesda's world and quest/faction design. I would like a game that's basically on the same technical level as a Skyrim but with a much higher degree of consequence. It's why I got so way into pathologic cause consequence is the driving factor behind the game's design, but something like that in a game with a much higher budget and technical aptitude would be very interesting

 

It's also why I went on a weird role play experiment with Skyrim and turned it into a VR orienteering game a while back but it's still just a very lacking game to me and I know that makes me an outlier, but I need more than a very pliable sandbox game where you can collect 100 watermelons and become master of everything. I would much prefer their games to become extremely rigid if that's what was needed to bring that feeling back but I don't think that's necessary. I just think Bethesda want players to feel powerful, but power can feel much more meaningful when it's earned. 

 

To be clear I think this problem goes to Oblivion and Fallout 3 as well, not just Skyrim.

[Sly Reflex]

Yep, actions should have consequences. Locking you out of content isn't bad, make the game so it's to be played several times to see all the stuff. It's fine to have a sorter game when it comes with replayability because of this.

[OCH]

Like InFamous, but in a less superficial way.

[shinymcshine]

1 hour ago, Sly Reflex said:

Yep, actions should have consequences. Locking you out of content isn't bad, make the game so it's to be played several times to see all the stuff. It's fine to have a sorter game when it comes with replayability because of this.

 

Yep, I've always thought there's scope for a game that branches in different directions based on your success in a 'mission' - where there's reward & consequence based on your actions rather than just a pass / fail & redo.

[shinymcshine]

WRT Fallout and the ES games - I suppose we've got to remember that they are open world RPGs and it's up to you as a player how you roleplay that experience - if you want to become a multi-skilled head of all the Guilds with a single character, yes you can - if you want to specialise and target just a single one, you can do that too, if you choose to do multiple sidequests and ignore the main quest it's your choice.

 

Maybe the game could constrain you for a narrower experience but it (mostly) chooses not too, as it's your roleplaying experience to develop how you want to.