Modern gaming features you can do without

I asked this around the PS3/360/Wii era, so for 2020, I'm asking this again.

What modern features in games that, if went away, you wouldn't care?

For me, it's still achievements/trophies. Admittedly, over the years, some games I did feel motivated to 100% (LEGO Star Wars II on 360, mainly for how many times I played the GameCube version, another is Pac-Man Championship Edition on Steam), but most achievements in games just feel forced. Like some games REWARD you for getting your ass kicked. And why I still don't feel a loss when Nintendo still doesn't have it's own achievement system (though some games have their own system and even then, you can still ignore).

What's your choice?

In game store

Grindwalls.

Day one patches. It would feel awesome to go out and buy a game without a multi gig day one patch being required.

Devs making boring games in the name of greater monetization. Doesn't really make much sense, and it often doesn't work out for them. Go figure.

Regen health, cover system, grinding, leveling up.

Cover system is alright in stealth games sure Ghost!

Regenerating health, kill cams, grenade indicators,worthless weapon upgrades, guns with barely any recoil.

Idiot markers/compass leading you around.

Leveling up is also good. What's wrong with character and difficulty progression?

Action games are better without leveling-up.

Achievements/Trophies indeed. Overpriced skins. Exclusive deals with Twitch Prime or other services. Advertising in game for items/content you can buy. Temporary items/content you can buy. Online store exclusivity (Ubistore) driving up game prices.

Longer than needed tutorials. Let me play the game and figure some stuff out. I don't need tutorials hours into a game.

Also the radar map in some multiplayer games that let you know enemy location.

Pretty much all of those.

I don't like when devs cater to non gamers. It's fine and all that you want non gamers able to play your game, but please try to keep the "for dummies" crap to a minimum in order to not piss off people who have played games before.

Can you give some examples?

Achievements. Even now I often forget that they exist.

Examples:

Take any game, mod in RPG elements and levelling up, see how the fun is sucked out of the game. As the once delicate balance that made these games good is out.
Take Mount And Blade: Warband. The Multiplayer is still quite popular these days, but in the early/mid 10's there was a mod called cRPG which added levelling and gearing up to the Multiplayer side of the game. Unfortunately, the game was clearly best balanced not having RPG elements, so while the mod remained popular for a year, it eventually died out.

RPGs are abstract elements, Action games are not very abstract games. Action games need to feel good to be fun. And there is a lot of balancing and tweaking, in order to make the most enjoyable experience.

• Damage/Health Tuning
• Frame Data
• Impact
• Player Expression

RPG elements can often interfere by adding additional variables to the first 3. And limit the 4th by encouraging player builds, making one of their moves far more potent than every other move in their arsenal.

Players will go the path of least resistance, and oftentimes the best builds are specialized in making one move as powerful as humanly possible.

@nintendoboy16: I take it you're not a member of trueachievements then. I don't mind achievements as going for them all can lead you to parts of the game that you might not have found otherwise, but on the flip side there are some poorly thought out ones, and ones where you feel they were lazy and without thought.

My gripe is the game asking me to up the difficulty every second race. Ok i'm winning easily on highly skilled and if I want more of a challenge I will up it myself no need to ask me every fucking 10mins :(

Oh and unskippable cutscenes, they can stick that where the sun don't shine.

I'm a junkie for achievements/trophies so yeah, I like'em and I try to get as many as I can building up my score. Hey @SolidTy (and I know you are watching while lurking) I'm coming for ya ;)

I'll tell you what I can do without. Force MP Achievements/Trophies that should never force the player playing MP just to unlocked achievements/trophies.

I dread turning on my PS4 these days. First I gotta do a system update, takes 20 minutes. Than I gotta download a 16GB Days Gone patch EVERY DAMN TIME... I disconnected it from the internet, and now I'm gaming worries free.

Yeah good list.

- I hate features like a minimap giving away enemy positions in COD and Battlefield. Turns it into a game of whack-a-mole. I far prefer Red Orchestra / Rising storm systems, where you feel like a real soldier who has to actually spot and identify his enemy and not run around like a headless chicken.

- In singleplayer games I'm far prefering the radar system over a minimap system. The minimap with tons and tons of icons was annoying (for example Assassin's Creed) .

I just hate too much HUD in general in games, when they hold your hand just way too much. I like less HUD, more immersion.

If you are gonna have hud clutter in your game, at least have the decency to provide options to turn it off.

I meant examples of action games that were negatively affected by a leveling up system. Like which games in particular.

Again, Mount and Blade: Warband was negatively affected.

As the mods clearly showed.

@R4gn4r0k: Well something doesn’t sound right there. You shouldn’t need to update your system and game every time you turn it on. I have my Xbox One set up to check for any updates to the system or games automatically so that all gets done when I’m sleeping or away. It’s just that every game these days seems to launch with a day one patch and that kind of bothers me because it makes me feel that these games are being rushed to market.

AAA industry wanted to make the non-RPGs RPG-ified and the RPGs de-RPG-ified, so everything can turn into one homogeneous piece of shit.

Pressing start in the title screen and seeing "connecting" afterwards.

For sure, monetary-based grinds have to go. And I haven't given a shit about achievements since 2010. They're there to make sure you dedicate more time to games your normally wouldn't care about.

I don't like the trend of adding character levels (sometimes even gun levels) into action games. Also, most open world games are awful. Seriously, maybe 1 is worth playing every 3 years or so. So when a franchise like Ghost Recon goes open world with gun levels and unlockable perks, that makes me sad. Good games get harder as you play them. These games just get stupid easy and you level up way too much for the game to continue being fun.

It's to the point that I just view a level system as lazy design in just about anything other than a turn-based or pausable rpg.

Well I only play on my PS4 like one-two times every month. And yeah, everytime I turn on my PS4 or Xbox One I get presented with an update... and they take way too long.

I could tell my consoles to update automatically, but I'm not fond of this kind of sleep mode, with low energy draw. So it's kinda my own fault, I know.

Day one patches are a huge benefit to the developers. In the time the game goes gold, goes to printing and goes to the press, they have another month or so to continue developing the game and get all of that in a day one patch.

@R4gn4r0k: I absolutely understand the benefit of day one patches for developers but I’d much rather have them just delay the game for a bit and have a more finished product on the disc.

Genres merging wouldnt be such a bad idea if devs understood what makes the various genres tick.

Sadly, they often do not. How many of these devs have DM'ed campaigns, heck, how many RPG devs these days have DM'ed campaigns?

I think that even with that understanding, it's basically impossible to make an action game with rpg mechanics that wouldn't be better without the rpg mechanics.

Depends on what they import.

Leveling? No
Character Customization? Subjective
Improvisation? Yes

Loot Boxes ive lost a lot of money on them and they are horrible they make yuou think you should open all your boxes and you will get something good.

I prefer the battle pass where you unlock new stuff and get really cool stuff at the end of the pass every level you get.

Loot in general is kind of a bad mechanic. For the life of me, I just can't get into something like Borderlands, Destiny or The Division.

Doing pretty good without coming here all that much

Every UI looking like Windows 10, Day One patches, battle royale... the list goes on

Nobody is shocked... At all...

• "Games as a service" or whatever you call it. Just built a solid game and leave it at that. If it sells well, make some expansion/s for it. I don't need "seasons" or anything like that for my games, or unlocks, or any of that crap.
• Achievements/trophies: it's just another intangible addiction-gambling mechanic put into a game to keep you playing it longer than you should.
• Loot/item level. In most of these games you are Billy Badass Special Forces Commander Kill-em-All, why do you need item levels? Just give me a gun and let me loose. I don't need to be given a false sense of difficulty/accomplishment from deflated/inflated item stats. If I choose a specific gun, I want it to be because of how it handles relative to a different gun, not the same gun ten levels lower than it.

Same.

Borderlands and Destiny are two of the most boring franchises I have ever experienced.

The Division 2 actually has good gameplay, however, so I can live with the loot mechanic.

Loot mechanics have even ruined games; i.e. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint. That game had a few problems but the loot aspect of it was arguably the largest problem. I swear to god 1/3 of the time I spend in that game is swapping out gear.

Fun fact me and solid were in a conversation on some "news" article on the front page a couple of years ago where he got upset and said he was a bigger Xbox gamer than I and wanted to bet that he had a higher Gamerscore than me, so I accepted his bet, and he never disclosed his Gamerscore or tag afterwards. And he pretty much hasn't been seen on here since.

I say your Gamerscore must be tiny now that you don't game on Xbox or are you talking about its little ugly sister Steam achievements lol

So if you're out there unsolid, i'm still here waiting for you to share your Gamerscore and I will share mine :)

@i_p_daily: Most of the achievements I do are on Steam, Origin, & Windows 10 that ties to my XBL. I just like to mess with SolidTy from time to time. My achievements on XBL is still the same with little increase which makes sense, I don't play that many MS games.

I was messing with solid also until he said he had a bigger Gamerscore, and that was a challenge I couldn't ignore, but he reneged on the bet and ran off and hasn't been seen since :(

If there's 2 things not to challenge me on its racers and Gamerscore lol.

You're all starting to sound like me with my disinterest and disdain for modern gaming. And I agree with pretty much everything above. I think RPGs need to do away with oversimplification in a poor attempt to appeal to a wider market because all you're doing is making a shitty boring game nobody wants to play. Quest markers telling you how to play the damn game is annoying. Remember when you had to think in games? Copy and paste quests putting quantity over quality so they can advertise "we have 60 hours of gameplay" without mentioning that 40 of those hours are literally doing the same thing over, and over again.

The only recent game I have found that I really enjoy is Mordhau. It's not your usual fighting or fps type of game. It provides a fresh new gameplay experience that I really enjoy. And the combat system takes practice and skill to get good at.

The only issue with modern gaming I have are games with way to much dlc or microtransactions, but even with that I can skip most of that nonsense and just play the game as is, or the rare times that the dlc is totally worth it and fun.

I love trophies, I like loot in certain games (I was addicted to both Destiny games), I dont mind health regen, etc etc.

Regen health

Loot boxes

Micro transactions

Long ass text or speech based tutorials right off the bat.

Sounds like you need to hang around places like this more https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?forums/general-rpg-discussion.4/ and GS less.

Have you played stuff like...

UnderRail

Age of Decadence/Dungeon Rats

Grimoire Heralds of the Winged Exemplar

Pathfinder: Kingmaker (with turn based mod)

Wasteland 2 (directors cut)

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Expeditions games (Conquistador & Viking)

It's not the glory days, but it's a hell of a lot better than the previous decade. The 00's may have had a strong beginning, but they soon became a wasteland, with only casual console games to play and no proper RPGs to be seen since Temple of Elemental Evil (and the rare one-man game like Knights of the Chalice). Those were truly depressing times for RPG fans.

@ghosts4ever: If you mean you want to see regenerating health and sticky cover to be removed, I absolutely agree. If you mean you want to see more then we are on opposite sides of the spectrum.

I want to see more one life games with objective based gameplay and no health regen or sticky cover.

SOCOM needs to happen in the worst of ways... but it needs to be at least as good as Confrontation and steer far and wide from that abomination SOCOM 4.

Have you looked into Rogue Company? I have been keeping as close of tabs as I can on the game, but they are keeping it sealed up pretty tight. Rumor has it that it will be releasing relatively soon though.

It looks kind of like Apex Legends or Fortnite graphically, but appears to have game modes like SOCOM. One life game play with modes like demolition, Extraction, Capture the Flag, Control Points, etc. Basically a 5v5 one life game with objective based modes with heavy customization taking heavy ques from SOCOM, Apex, and Rainbow Six.

*edit

I re-read the thread title, and I think we are on the same page with this one.

I have played a few of them. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is one of the best RPGs to be made in a long time, but I cannot play one recent game forever.

What about when developers release a game with an incomplete story that you have to buy DLC to continue?

Achievements, trophies, facebook connectivity, tv apps, folders, themes, friend notifications, mtx, loot boxes, surprise mechanics, season passes, GaaS games.

Those "quality of life improvements" that dumb the game down to braindead / game journalist difficulty