Make an insignificant change to improve a game.

[weemadando]

I loved Act of War and name it Strategy Game of the Year for many of these reasons, it had a beautiful series of shortcut keys and the onscreen menus were FUCKING SIMPLE and EASY TO USE.

[Stark]

[rant]Everyone who's suggested putting a mark on their screen for no-crosshair games has never played a decent one. Decent no-crosshair games have a bit of freelook in the centre, so that your weapon is not simply locked to the centre of the viewable area. Problem solved. But hey, an INF-style 'bullets go where your barrel is pointing' system is best - that way hip-shooting is inaccurate because you really don't know where it's pointing due to perspective.[/rant]

Allowing the player in Dynasty Warrior games to say 'you guys, follow me' and have nearby Random Soldiers follow the player. Improve immersion, and actually provide a use for the 70% of soldiers on the wrong side of the front that spend the whole battle dancing until the general gets killed from the other flank.

[Ace Pace]

How about having more configurability? Nothing pisses me off more then a options menu with only sound settings.

[wautd]

If only the pulse rifle from Half Life 2 could carry some more clips

[Vendetta]

Hostile Waters managed to do this, why can't anyone else figure it out?

Because no-one bought Hostile Waters. So no-one thought "People are buying this, we must pillage it's bones immediately!".

This is because everyone in the entire world is stupid. It is the only logical explanation.

[Mr Bean]

May I point out(And once agian pimp) Forgotten Hope 2's proposed infantry combat aiming system?


Hipfiring is Cone based with the Cones being very big(But realistic) you can fire while you jump but your staimina limits you to only jumping once or twice, and your accurasy will be total shit.

However rclick and go into the ironsite mode and your weapon fires just were are aiming.
However
1. Your weapon sways slightly in iron sight
2. How much swaying is determined by how much stamina you have. It regens slowly and jumping twice will drain you completly. Laying down regens it faster
3. However your fire will become more inaccurate in cone and iron-sight if your "suppressed" which has various levels.
Supressed meaning an MG42 is chucking 1400 BPM about two inchs above your head. An 88 shell just cratered the wall next to you. You were just hit,

All these things up to degrade your accurasy to shit if your under fire.

Oh and yes it has bullet drop which varys from weapon to weapon.
(Note Forgotten Hope 2 is a WWII mode for the Battlefield 2 engine and is still in private testing. To be released? We don't know but I want it bad.)

[Dooey Jo]

It's hard to make insignificant changes that are supposed to have significant effects on the enjoyability of a game, but I'll try.

1. How about you get to keep the Hylian Loach after you've caught it, in Zelda: OoT. Struggling with it for a good ten minutes and then having the fishing dude say you can't keep it because it's rare was no fun.
2. Replace DK from Mario Kart64; alternatively, alter his sounds; alternatively, create a non-cheating AI (but that's a significant change).
3. Make the stat-changes in Castlevania: DoS increase exponentially with each level after a certain level. If I waste my time levelling up to level 99 I want to get to be god, like I could in SotN. Since level 50 is the most you can have in Boss Rush mode, perhaps the super levels can start after that. I want 9999 HP dammit! As it is now, there is no point in levelling further after level 60, and I only did it because I thought Soma would be crazy powerful after a while. But alas...

[Stark]

May I point out(And once agian pimp) Forgotten Hope 2's proposed infantry combat aiming system?


Hipfiring is Cone based with the Cones being very big(But realistic) you can fire while you jump but your staimina limits you to only jumping once or twice, and your accurasy will be total shit.

However rclick and go into the ironsite mode and your weapon fires just were are aiming.
However
1. Your weapon sways slightly in iron sight
2. How much swaying is determined by how much stamina you have. It regens slowly and jumping twice will drain you completly. Laying down regens it faster
3. However your fire will become more inaccurate in cone and iron-sight if your "suppressed" which has various levels.
Supressed meaning an MG42 is chucking 1400 BPM about two inchs above your head. An 88 shell just cratered the wall next to you. You were just hit,

All these things up to degrade your accurasy to shit if your under fire.

Oh and yes it has bullet drop which varys from weapon to weapon.
(Note Forgotten Hope 2 is a WWII mode for the Battlefield 2 engine and is still in private testing. To be released? We don't know but I want it bad.)

It always amazes me how every generation of mods go through the same convoluted evolution towards the same end. You'd think they'd just lift systems that work from older mods, but noooooo, they have to slowly baby-step their way there through eighteen patches, and when a mod proposes a system similar to, or inferior to, an older one, people laud it as groundbreaking. It's like mod players/developers don't actually play a broad spectrum of mods, or are too stupid to appreciate that constantly redeveloping the same feature EVERY REALISM MOD is laughable.

Err, from my 'I liked modding Wolf' perspective. Maybe these guys are 15 and never played anything before CS:S, but every mod team is the same and their lack of research is always amusing. Every forum is full of 'zomg how to marry accurate weapons with extended gunfights where scoring a hit is hard' when the answer was first used YEARS ago.

[Mr Bean]

Stark what exactly are you trying to say? Your rambling abit here but what I'm guessing is that someplace sometime what I just outlined above has been done by someone else. Since you never mention who it looks like regular bitching. I know the above system has been used before in other games of diffrent types.

The old Close Combat's for example or the Combat mission series. But acutaly applying the whole thing to a FPS has not yet(To my knowledge unless Red O for UT2004 finaly pulled it off.) been done in any FPS game.

[Stark]

Stark what exactly are you trying to say? Your rambling abit here but what I'm guessing is that someplace sometime what I just outlined above has been done by someone else. Since you never mention who it looks like regular bitching. I know the above system has been used before in other games of diffrent types.

The old Close Combat's for example or the Combat mission series. But acutaly applying the whole thing to a FPS has not yet(To my knowledge unless Red O for UT2004 finaly pulled it off.) been done in any FPS game.

It's not personal: I've just seen dozens of mods go through the same motions to work out the same gameplay issues, and it always appears like noone ever decides to look at *other* mods and see what worked. Games like Red Orchestra are particularly bad in this way, since it's taken them literally *years* to get to almost-INF level, but they've been scratching their heads and 'pioneering' the whole way, rather than simply taking what works wholesale.

INF had everything in your list except the suppression effect. In UT98. FIVE YEARS AGO. With attachments, load-based speed, and all the 'new' ideas like slower strafe, properly 3d scope images, iron blur, multiple load options (mags, drums, belts) etc. There's a reason why every realism mod has been disappointing since. INF, of course, looks almost exactly like shit these days.

Again, I wasn't trying to take the piss or anything.

[Medic]

Actually I'm not sure I care much for windage or gravity because it's really just realism for it's own sake.

For flight sim / arcade shooters like Ace Combat 5 though there is one minor change that opens up a lot of tactics. It'd especially be good in multiplayer (if fucking Namco would work it in that is!) -- it's actually something you can do in the game but not by design and it's this: have the ability to turn off your radar.

The AI in Ace Combat 5 generally sucks but the better "pilots" when locked on will dodge, twist and turn so you get into the degenerating tightest loops contests or pulling away at high speed for a turn around head on. But with planes with anti-ground ordanance, when you switched to it, you couldn't lock onto air targets. The effect was you could fly up their ass and smoke them with the Vulcan or switch to AA and let loose 2 missiles at point blank. I've dubbed it "lock-off technique" and've shared it here before but it's something that should be standard in those types of games; although mulitplayer it'd be useless offline becaues of "OMG, screen looker!" [online is the ideal multiplayer environment anyway, you don't limit yourself to opponents who you know intimately]

*For RTS's, at least the ones with "fog of war" so probably all the above view ones (ie, not full 3D like Homeworld) there should be true indirect fire. Like in Starcraft the siege tank has a fire range greater than sight range but you still need to "see" the target with a scout. You should be able to arbitrarily direct fire into the fog of war. This would really make siege weapons neat. The drawback I could think of is that there probably isn't going to be ammo considerations in most RTS's so someone on the defense could just fire at the max range in front of them at a choke point, basically making that point uncrossable FOREVER (the solution would be to make it cost money like scarabs/reavers, but have the purchasing be autokmatic to avoid ENDLESS fucking micro to reload).

*Maybe having rounds "cost" money would be an innovation in and of itself across the board, although this would mean that if you're fighting a last ditch defense, you're garaunteed to lose because your lack of map control and resources and enemy attacks will compound badly and starve you even faster. As far as melee units, well, that'd be their advantage of course, not costing anything. Ditto with laser / beam weapons, being the best but limited to direct fire. It's still probably best only applied to powerful siege weapons to curb abuse though.

**Another minor one on RTS's and this is a thought based off Starcraft and not necessarily all RTS's: shooting on the move. First, that it's possible. Second, that you can do it going backwards too for fighting retreats. (this would probably make melee units much weaker though).

***Another one on RTS's to make APM less of a dominant factor: automatic grouping. Weak early game units automatically get assigned to the 1 hotkey. (and the 2 3 and 4 as more come in). Mid game units get 5, 6 and 7 and maybe 8 and late game units get the last numbers. Make it so the SPACEBAR is a deselect all button and from here make it so that the keyboard letters are shortcuts to buildings, further cutting down time that you have to manually assign buildings to hotkeys and also freeing up ALL the numbers for units. Finally, when you build units from a particular building, since the building is selected, have it so that the numbers build units. 1 the first one, 2 the second. Hell, maybe have it so that while there are still separate unit producing buildings, that all purchases are made from one location, so you can quickly and efficiently hit a flurry of numbers. It's all about streamlining. Basically, a hatchery, but without necessarily the quirck of the larvae system. Plus, it doesn't make a zerg build-style out of a terran player because the terran player still has to commit to those independent buildings to benefit from the units it builds, not having a jack of all trades hatchery that needs only tech to build any unit. THis wouldn't destroy SC's balance because zerg still has the built-in advantage of seamless tech switches (I hated late game zerg rushes after hydra lurk all game or the latter after the former all game).

***One last thing: to improve reaction time IMMENSLEY, but again, by utilizing shortcuts and not Korea-wank handspeed, have it so that when you're attacked (and virtually all FPS's have a "we're under attack warning") have, for example, the ALT button zoom to the location and the "CTRL" button move to the nearest available unit you control. Trust me, at the highest level of play (which I've skirted just under at my best) late game is all about macro management. Having positive control of all your units and just, massive base management, at least for terran and toss with their bagillion supply depots and pylons. Zerg are inherently streamlined in some ways.

***Hell, it's beyond my ability, not being a computer scientist, but if you could program this into Starcraft, you could probably get the same effect as a high APM (the steamlining would get rid of the physicaly process of assigning hotkeys initially or selecting buildings and then selecting, 2 separate actions). So although on paper your APM might not improve much, it's a very deceptive situation. You'd be MUCH faster all the same. This would allow players who don't play hardcore to focus more on the cereberal aspect of the game instead of the physical skill it unfortunately takes to play STRATEGY games. I mean in FPS's, speed, reactions and skill is everything but it shouldn't be the case in RTS's, a keen mind should be the victor but sadly, this isn't necessarily the case (in general, if there's a match with one player with 100 APM and the other like, Korean level of 200-300, you can guess who'll win).

****Another one in RTS's and this would just be awesome IMO: being able to share resources in allied games! Why the fuck not? If one team player is good enough that he stands out among his peers and (rightfully, admittedly) hogs the resources, he can share it if necessary. Now in reality, if the best player sticks out to such a great degree, one could easily make the case that because of his skill and likely MUCH greater actions per minute, that only he'd be able to effectively utilize the resources. The counterpoint is that no matter how fast, one player can only be in one place at one time (sure you can "move attack" all over the map but if they have spell-casters and you don't micro to look after units, they'll die left and right).

I'd should email Blizzard, lol. Of course, people still have to use the hotkeys and this is part of the lack of appeal to RTS's -- it's just too complicated for some people. These same people usually aren't geared to computer games in general IMO though, they like controllers. Of course, having seen the Light of the True Way, they realize not that keyboard and mouse is true control. Seriously though, that's all I got.

[Nephtys]

Every single thing you mentioned in that RTS bit... it's called Dawn of War.

Your Artillery shoots FAR, FAR beyond it's screen, units are automatically grouped into squads, shortcuts are easy and you can tell when fighting is happening, and you can share resources. Shooting on the move works fine, and maneuver matters.

[Hotfoot]

Aye, Dawn of War does many things right on the RTS mark, though they still use the same annoying menu selections. I wish someone would make a popular game that broke the trend.

[Medic]

Every single thing you mentioned in that RTS bit... it's called Dawn of War.

Your Artillery shoots FAR, FAR beyond it's screen, units are automatically grouped into squads, shortcuts are easy and you can tell when fighting is happening, and you can share resources. Shooting on the move works fine, and maneuver matters.

FUCKING LOL. I honestly had no idea. I've been looking for another good computer game for a while so I'll go ahead and thank you.

[Nephtys]

Aye, Dawn of War does many things right on the RTS mark, though they still use the same annoying menu selections. I wish someone would make a popular game that broke the trend.

AT least the menu selection buttons aren't critical for the game. They're for 'very special' orders you don't use that often. Not like say, Warcraft 3, when you're bouncing between ten units clicking on powers.

The only powers in Dawn of War are like.. one per some units unit (with specialized uses, ex. Frag Grenade, or jump pack), and hero abilities (spells, orbital bombardment...)

[Adrian Laguna]

-snip-

How about simply having fully configurable hot-keys? That tends to make everyone happy.

[The Yosemite Bear]

make the evil quests work in Fallout 2

[Hotfoot]

Nephtys: True, it's not nearly as critical, but it is still a factor that hampers my ability to really enjoy the game to it's fullest.

-snip-

How about simply having fully configurable hot-keys? That tends to make everyone happy.

It's not quite the same. There's a difference in paradigm that would be relatively easy to fix, but yet is not achieved.

Consider - the scheme I'm talking about views the menu as a grid, rather than a series of commands. Sure, I COULD remap the controls to something else, but it doesn't change the fact that in doing so, nothing has really changed. I can't reassign Q to be the upper left button in EVERY menu in an RTS, just to a specific command. That might work for unit commands (some of them), but the menu still suffers from the same fatal flaw.

It's such an easy thing to do, too. Most RTS games ('Craft especially) use the same damn menu for unit controls and orders as they do for construction, research, and unit construction. Unless I spend hours memorizing the shortcuts for each race, I'm using my mouse to manuever those menus, and since micro is so freaking important, that's time I'm not keeping an eye on the situation, managing troops, and so on.

[Mr Bean]

Just about everything you described there can already be found in America's Army.

Except America's Army the concept of supression does not exst except in the limited fashion. Plus ironsight fire in AA is still cone fire.

[Adrian Laguna]

It's not quite the same. There's a difference in paradigm that would be relatively easy to fix, but yet is not achieved.

Consider - the scheme I'm talking about views the menu as a grid, rather than a series of commands. Sure, I COULD remap the controls to something else, but it doesn't change the fact that in doing so, nothing has really changed. I can't reassign Q to be the upper left button in EVERY menu in an RTS, just to a specific command. That might work for unit commands (some of them), but the menu still suffers from the same fatal flaw.

It's such an easy thing to do, too. Most RTS games ('Craft especially) use the same damn menu for unit controls and orders as they do for construction, research, and unit construction. Unless I spend hours memorizing the shortcuts for each race, I'm using my mouse to manuever those menus, and since micro is so freaking important, that's time I'm not keeping an eye on the situation, managing troops, and so on.

Now you just lost me. I really don't use hotkeys that much, I actually find myself using them more in turn-based games (where I may have to press "fire" 2-6 times per unit, and rally 20-someting different squads, per turn) than in RTS where I use the mouse almost exclusively.

Are you suggesting a dynamic hot-key system that does different things depending on what menu you are currently looking at? So that you can press say: "Q" (unit build), "A" (scroll), "A" (scroll), "A" (scroll), "Z" (build selected), and out comes a battletank? That would be a build order enacted in six seconds if you haven't memorized that the tank is the third item in the "build unit" menu. Three seconds if you have.

If so, it's pretty cool and a great idea.

[mauldooku]

Concerning the lack of crosshairs - no. Make it an option, default to off. In multiplayer, all that will happen is that people will tape the crosshair on their monitor. Completely undetectable by cheating programs, and it achieves the same effect. If you want to immerse yourself, fine, but don't take the option away from everyone else.

If you want, why not make it a graphical effect, like in Full Spectrum Warrior, where there's a circle where everything is clear, and everything else is blurred out - as you move and such, the circle expands. That way, you are given a general idea where your bullets are likely to go, no crosshairs, and a nice visual that adds to the situational awareness aspect of the game.

As for my tweak - make RTS game menus a fucking grid on the keyboard. Fuck them and their retarded letter shortcuts that make no sense or are contrived. You have a 3x4 grid menu? Here's a thought!

QWER
ASDF
ZXCV

It's not hard, and it does the job. It works no matter how fucked up you make the tech tree, it will work equally well for units, buildings, or anything. Hostile Waters managed to do this, why can't anyone else figure it out?

Natural Selection did it too. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it's vastly faster than letter-based shortcuts. A great change.

There's also a 3rd party program for Starcraft that'll do what you're looking for, known as Keycraft. Link.

[The Yosemite Bear]

what no comment about my suggestion of fixing Fallout/Fallout2 so that you could win using a darkside path?

[Ace Pace]

what no comment about my suggestion of fixing Fallout/Fallout2 so that you could win using a darkside path?

How is it an insignificent change?
\

[The Grim Squeaker]

what no comment about my suggestion of fixing Fallout/Fallout2 so that you could win using a darkside path?

How is it an insignificent change?
\

It is when many of the quests are in game and most are implemented, yet fail due to bugs or script holes (For example, the one where you sleep with Bishop's wife has her forget to speak to you after the fuck half the time,).
Fallout 2 was released 6 months after FO1, and it shows that it was pushed out of the door months before compketion, it's even worse than KOTOR2

[Ace Pace]

what no comment about my suggestion of fixing Fallout/Fallout2 so that you could win using a darkside path?

How is it an insignificent change?
\

It is when many of the quests are in game and most are implemented, yet fail due to bugs or script holes (For example, the one where you sleep with Bishop's wife has her forget to speak to you after the fuck half the time,).
Fallout 2 was released 6 months after FO1, and it shows that it was pushed out of the door months before compketion, it's even worse than KOTOR2

Yet the thread talks about insignificent changes, not a bug fix.