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?

  • tal@lemmy.today
    1·
    9 months ago

    character speed control on PC - we had this stuff figured out in 2002, when Splinter Cell came out! Why the hell are we still stuck with terribly slow walk and slightly too fast jogging?

    So, this may not be a real problem if people aren’t dead-set on hard realism, but one point that I recall being made is that in general, in-game characters tend to move more-quickly than real world people do. IIRC from a long-ago article, Quake 2 was calculated to have the main character running at about 35 mph. Even an unencumbered Usain Bolt doing a short sprint isn’t gonna be in that neighborhood. That has some significant tactical impacts in a number of games in terms of, say, the ability to close on a ranged attacker or the value of ambushing.

    A number of military sims that I’ve seen – a game genre where having realistic speeds often matter a lot – provide “time compression”, where one can speed up the game world to get through periods where nothing interesting is happening. That does require the game to be able to simulate the world at a higher rate than normal, though.

    • Essence_of_Meh@kayb.ee
      4·
      9 months ago

      That’s not what I mean though. Back in Splinter Cell you could use mouse wheel to increase or decrease your character walking speed - similar to how you can do it with an analog stick. It’s about giving player more gradual control on how fast/slow you move.

      That said, customizable game time scale (not game speed) is also another thing I’d like to see in games.

      • tal@lemmy.today
        1·
        9 months ago

        Oh, I get what you mean. So you want something like analog input for movement.

        Hmm. I think that a lot of FPSes use the mousewheel for “cycle weapon”. I guess you could have some kind of chording support, but I think that the problem is mostly that there isn’t a free analog input on keyboard+mouse for it.

        The other thing would be that you only get one analog axis then, and a lot of games will need two analog axes for analog movement.

        I was just reading the other day about some keyboard that apparently had keys with pressure-sensitive switches. I have no idea how many games actually support it, and bet that it’s obscenely expensive, but that’d provide necessary analog inputs, assuming that games add support.

        googles

        Ah, apparently it’s a thing with “gaming” PC keyboards right now.

        https://www.pcgamer.com/cooler-master-launches-a-keyboard-with-pressure-sensitive-keys-for-dollar200/

        Cooler Master launches a keyboard with pressure-sensitive keys for $200

        https://www.amazon.com/ROCCAT-ISKU-Force-FX-Pressure-Sensitive/dp/B01MTA0OAP

        https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/razer-huntsman-v2-analog-keyboard-review-pressure-sensitive-swank

        Razer Huntsman, $250.

        thinks

        You know, honestly, I think that this is at least partly a special case of what a lot of the other comments have asked for, which is basically a more-powerful input layer on the PC sitting between my devices and the game. Like, if I have a bunch of keyboards and joysticks and mice or whatever, let me attach axes and buttons however I want to functions in the game, do macros, whatever.

        I had a comment complaining that I had a controller with two extra buttons than a standard XBox controller, but that most games can’t take advantage of that, even though they provide extensive support for rebinding keys on keyboards.

        Someone else wanted to be able to bind any input to any game function, wanted macros and stuff.

        You’re wanting the ability to link an analog input to existing code in the game that can take an analog value.

        Several people have asked for the ability to rebind controller keys.

        I also recall seeing, in a past discussion, a handicapped user talk about how the ability to rebind was important to them for accessibility reasons.

        • Essence_of_Meh@kayb.ee
          1·
          9 months ago

          I think you’re making this a little bit more complicated than necessary. Those gadgets are cool but that would probably require more support by the devs than a simple keybinds and considering how niche this stuff is… I think the latter is a more probable option.

          Those two axis you mentioned would be modified together anyway since we’d want the speed modifier to be the same no matter the direction. Alternatively one could make it into a separate variable included in speed calculations - this way you can keep the direct input value provided by the controller (whether it’s a gamepad or a keyboard) and have one more piece that can sit unchanged when playing with analog controls.

          Mouse scroll was an example since that’s how it worked in Splinter Cell back in the day (it’s also how Star Citizen does it today). You could just as well use any other key to increase/decrease the this muliplier (or make it mouse scroll + modifier key).

          Overall, I do agree that more flexibility in input mapping would be a good thing. Can’t go wrong with giving people more choice.