Hear me out. A few games have shader installations that will usually apply any new settings you put down AFTER you restart the game, and a lot of other games have graphics settings that will only apply after you’ve rebooted the game.
I don’t think it would cost developers ANY amount of money or any significant development time to add a “Reboot game” button (or toggle) every time the player presses the quit button, or give the player a prompt every time they change a setting that requires a game restart (like in both PC versions of GTA V).
I also think ANY game should have a “full potato” mode capable of running in older computers with NONE of the fancy graphics stuff that we have access to today, despite having a decent computer now.
Chromatic Aberration toggle
Motion Blur toggle
Distortion Effect toggle
Vignette Effect toggle
FoV slider
DLSS/FSR implementation (cause fuck TAA, like really, really fuck TAA and its smear)
Oh, and Head Bobbing/Camera Shake slider, forgot about these
Don’t forget film grain.
I’d like a button to just disable all the post processing things at once
A way to start a fresh save. Or better yet, allow multiple saves/profiles. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to search online for where save files are located and delete them myself.
And if it’s a Steam game, you also have to worry about cloud saves undoing whatever you did. Please, just make it simple for players to do this.
for that matter, why can’t we ever add a note or a tagline to save files? too many rpg’s and console rpgs have multiple save slots, multiple endings and all that other added content jazz, but no way to internally identify the save files that matter?
Om that note, see the save-tree would be nice. So you know when saves diverge and such.
For real. Especially if there are settings that permanently and drastically alter the game that you select when you start.
Nude mode. We’re all grown ups here.
I mean, in the same vein, just have age rating settings on games where applicable. Sometimes I want as much adult in my adult game as possible, other ones I want just good old fashioned fun. Overall I want sensorship to fucking quit it. Especially lately where they’re going back to games that were developed one way and sensoring them when they do HD remakes. Fucking stupid
Agree but then that’s extra B’s in development which I’m sure most studios dgaf about.
Yeah that’s the issue with most of these suggestions and why they’re being tagged as ‘standardization’ make it a requirement. I fully realize my suggestion though is a bit more work and probably will never happen ha.
Even if some people aren’t, no one is getting psychologically damaged by the sight of some digital boobs. Puritanical attitudes toward sex do more damage than seeing boobs ever could.
“Sure, kids, all those limbs flying around and buckets of blood, as long as your parents are cool with it (or you just forget to tell them about it). All that stuff representing causing excruciating pain and ending lives. But not one tiny sliver of a nipple for you, or else your mind will be CORRUPTED!”
For fuck’s sake, autocorrect changed “nipple” to “ripple” while I was typing that.
Only if it.works both ways. Dong physics, anyone?
pausing during cutscenes - it’s weird that this isn’t always an option even in AAA
Also skipping them, please.
Every game should have the option to toggle motion blur off, toggle frame gen and upscaling off.
I don’t think I can name one game without a motion blur slider, or toggle.
I’m pretty sure just cause 3 didnt have an option to disable it and it was horrible. They fixed it later I believe.
All fighting games (or anything that runs deterministically on all players’ machines, like fighting games do) should always have a performance test requirement before you hop online. We figured this out over a decade ago, and plenty still don’t do it, resulting in people with weak computers causing matches to appear laggy.
As a society, we should agree on which menu subtitles belong in. Is it language? Audio? Display? Game Settings? Sometimes I’ve seen games put them in multiple menus so that we always find them where we’re looking for them.
I’m no expert on colorblind settings, but I tried playing Monaco with someone who’s red/green colorblind, and that game was nearly impossible for him.
If your game runs online, I should be able to host the server myself, and launching a listen server from within the game ought to be present, too. It might be nice to surface port forward information there as well. LAN is nice; Direct IP connections are better. (Thanks, Larian, for including both!)
I’ve seen games with either a totally separate “accessibility” section or tab, or the settings in related tabs and those settings also all in the accessibility menu.
I really really like this modern gaming thing where accessibility settings are now standard.
separe audio settings for bgm, sound effects, etc
A remove HUD options. I’d also like it if they put a big warning in the graphics section explaining how higher graphics can affect the game.
I see a lot of people bitching about lag, but if my shit connection and potato PC can run the game on low, I’m pretty sure the complainers need to reduce their expectations, accept that they don’t have a top of the line computer anymore and bring down their settings.
Not quite a setting, but every game should be required to tell you how long ago the last save was when you quit the game. I absolutely don’t understand why it’s only a tiny minority of games that does this, it is such an obvious thing to do
I like this, and I think it should be complemented with a “Save and Quit to OS” button.
Like a timestamp on the save?
I’m thinking specifically when you exit the game, and it says “Are you sure? All progress since you last saved will be lost”, it should just have an additional “(last saved 2 minutes ago)” line in there. I think the recent Spiderman games did that, iirc
Ah yeah, then absolutely. Warning you that you may be fucking up and then having you quit on faith is an insane move by a dev.
Yeah exactly, but more often than not that’s exactly what happens, it’s infuriating
Well yes and no. Stellar Blade for example. When you click exit to desktop it pops up the usual unsaved data will be lost stuff but also has a timer below it showing when the last save was made
For over-the-shoulder games, separate field-of-view AND CAMERA DISTANCE.
For player-hosted games, an option to reject hosts using unsuitable hardware or low bandwidth, high latency networks. My gripe is specific to Warframe on the Switch 1, but if the developers of any game can’t/won’t operate public game servers and choose to offload the responsibility to the players, the choice should belong to the players.
Low fov and really far camera is ass
Almost as bad as low fov and too close camera and too low camera.
Gameplay settings menus that allow you to turn off gameplay mechanisms you simply don’t enjoy, or tune them.
I’m talking about ones that are like one line of code being set to true instead of false etc. That type of thing.
Basically things like that and the Atomfall gameplay/difficulty settings menu
I don’t give a fuck if some pretentious asses “artistic vision” requires the player to backtrack half way across a level on every death or thinks a shitty minigame should be played no less than 153 times every play through. I want to be able to just turn off the unfun shit, and leave on the fun shit.
This is a game. I don’t care if the developer thinks X Y or Z adds to the experience. If I don’t, within reason I should just be able to turn it off.
I disagree because it solely approaches games as some sort of “electronic commodity” and outright despises a development group’s artistry.
Sure, not every game is trying to be art. But games have long gone beyond the realm of simply “entertain me”. That opinion is like saying “books should be made in a way that allows users to change the story whenever and however they want.” It is something you can do but there’s no imperative to cater to it.
I disagree because it solely approaches games as some sort of “electronic commodity” and outright despises a development group’s artistry.
This is meaningless pretentious gibberish. It’s like saying that watching movie on an unintended device is disrespecting the playwright.
Why should your desire to put entertaining past times on a pedestal restrict what I should be able to do.
If you feel that way, then play games as they intend. There is no reason to be against other people having an option just because you don’t like it.
You are in essence gatekeeping enjoying a video game as a concept. Like people must enjoy them the way you envision.
That opinion is like saying “books should be made in a way that allows users to change the story whenever and however they want.” It is something you can do but there’s no imperative to cater to it.
This makes no sense at all as an analogy. Books don’t run on game engines and don’t have recycled bits of logic that game mechanics are comprised of that can be mass changed to great effect. The feature you’re describing would require the equivalent of writing the book a million times over. The changes Im describing are often accomplished on day one by modders, or just included by the developers as a quality of life feature set.
You are in essence gatekeeping enjoying a video game as a concept. Like people must enjoy them the way you envision.
What an incredibly inaccurate statement. I love modding video games, I spend more time modding video games than I spend playing video games. I understand that the vision developers have doesn’t often align with what I want from their product.
I don’t agree that developers should be spending dev cycles making a game functional for a user that turns off any configuration of gameplay mechanics.
Saying you can just set a variable from “
truetofalse” is so laughably misunderstanding what goes into software development much less game development that it sounds entitled. What gameplay mechanics are you even saying should be configurable? All of them? Just turn off the combat in a fighting game? At what point is a gameplay mechanic integral to the genre/experience? And who is the person or persons that decide?Developers should be free to create what they want, and the end user is free to mod it however they want. That includes, for the devs, not purposefully obfuscating things so that modding is more diffcult.
Saying you can just set a variable from “true to false” is so laughably misunderstanding what goes into software development much less game development that it sounds entitled.
This is an attempt to sound smart that falls flat. The idea that there are no configuration settings that are simply inaccessible to users which are boolean values is laughably naive and provably wrong in many games.
What gameplay mechanics are you even saying should be configurable? All of them? Just turn off the combat in a fighting game? At what point is a gameplay mechanic integral to the genre/experience? And who is the person or persons that decide?
This isn’t an argument, its you saying that without being hyper specific, and laying out a detailed rule book for hypothetical future games, youll arbitrarily decide to assume the most irrational conclusion so that you can continue to rage and gate keep.
Developers should be free to create what they want, and the end user is free to mod it however they want. That includes, for the devs, not purposefully obfuscating things so that modding is more diffcult.
This is a strawman argument, as no one in this thread is restricting any developers ability to do anything. It is quite literally a wishlist thread. This “criticism” could literally be applied to anything in this thread. Its invalid.
I don’t give a fuck if some pretentious asses “artistic vision” requires the player to backtrack half way across a level on every death or thinks a shitty minigame should be played no less than 153 times every play through.
Then just don’t play that game or use cheats (if its a singleplayer game)?
I don’t see why a game developer needs to intentionally provide an option to remove mechanics they designed a game around just to please someone that doesn’t want to play the game as they designed it.
Then just don’t play that game or use cheats (if its a singleplayer game)?
Alternatively, the devs could just have those options, as some games do, and everyone is happy.
You have such a weird gate keeper take here.
This is a wishlist. No one is forced to do anything by me saying this is my preference.
You are stanning for a nonexistent idea of a game. This is an unbelievable level of gatekeeping.
Lets talk about QTEs as an example. Because for QTEs, a developer can easily add an option to entirely circumvent them, with just a single boolean and a single line of code in the QTE input method.
I think that, for accessibility reasons, it is perfectly reasonable to ask for an option to switch between tapping a button and holding a button to complete a QTE. I think it is unreasonable to ask developers for an option to completely remove QTEs from their game (such as auto-succeed/auto-complete). For many games, this would turn an interactive part of the game which is normally followed by an uninteractive cutscene into an uninteractive cutscene immediately followed by another uninteractive cutscene. Players that disable QTEs could easily be sitting through very long stretches of uninteractive parts of the game instead of interacting with the game, leading to those players complaining about long cutscenes since they usually completely forget they disabled QTEs.
Shenmue has Quick Time Events. A lot of them. If someone hates QTEs, it would be better for them not to play the game at all than to play without them. It is a core part of the intended experience that enhances the player’s time with the game. You get to interact with the cutscene instead of dropping the controller and turning off your brain. As a player, you pay more attention and keep your controller ready because at any moment you could be hit with a QTE and you want to be ready for that. You as a player have anticipation, excitement, nervousness, fear, etc that the developer makes you feel using mechanics like QTEs. You are more engaged with the game than someone that wants those deleted from the game, and in the end that means you will get more enjoyment out of the game. Someone that wants that turned off wants to play a different game.
Not every game is made for every person. And thats okay, thats good even.
For many games, this would turn an interactive part of the game which is normally followed by an uninteractive cutscene into an uninteractive cutscene immediately followed by another uninteractive cutscene. Players that disable QTEs could easily be sitting through very long stretches of uninteractive parts of the game instead of interacting with the game, leading to those players complaining about long cutscenes since they usually completely forget they disabled QTEs.
This is such a bizzare and contrived example.
Firstly, because the idea that QTE’s are anything but fill in the situation you’ve described is ridiculous. Secondly, because it is literally preference based (for instance, I would have loved to just eliminated QTEs completely from Dispatch), and lastly, because your made up result could easily instead just be that they recieve rave reviews for how accessible their game is and how freeing it is to have the ability to play how you want to play.
If someone hates QTEs, it would be better for them not to play the game at all than to play without them.
This is only true to someone who is pretentious and gatekeepy about what they feel other people should enjoy. Why do you have such strong opinions about how other people should live their lives?
As a player, you pay more attention and keep your controller ready because at any moment you could be hit with a QTE and you want to be ready for that.
Not everyone likes or wants that. I can personally say I can’t recall a time where QTEs added to a game experience, and in games where I’ve modded out similar, they played much better to me. Thats the big important thing; to me. You obviously have tremendous trouble imagining anyone else having a different felt experience than you do.
Not every game is made for every person. And thats okay, thats good even.
This is a bullshit shield from criticism. A game having a feature I don’t like doesn’t mean I’m not the audience for said game, it just means the game is less enjoyable for me.
The idea that no game should be criticized or offer options, and instead people should just never play any game that isn’t perfectly suited to them is obviously absurd but the clear logical conclusion from your nonsensical advice here.
I’m talking about ones that are like one line of code being set to true instead of false etc
I don’t know how many, if any, settings matching the true/false + 1 line of code restraints even exist.
If you can change a setting, even if it’s a binary choice, someone had to think about, implement and test everything pertaining to these choices.
Depending on what kind of mechanic we’re talking about and how deeply integrated into the rest of the game this mechanic is, that could be a big task.
don’t know how many, if any, settings matching the true/false + 1 line of code restraints even exist.
Absolutely. For example, turning off running out of stamina, removing item loss, turning off minigames is close.
There are tons. Atomfall has a ton of options that are similarly simple.
If you can change a setting, even if it’s a binary choice, someone had to think about, implement and test everything pertaining to these choices.
Nah. Some choices just arent that complicated. I think you’re over complicating it. We can especially see that this is true in many games where things are modded in. Like in Cyberpunk, just not having to play the minigames is a better experience imo. Like its slightly more than the one line hyperbole, but not much.
Depending on what kind of mechanic we’re talking about and how deeply integrated into the rest of the game this mechanic is, that could be a big task.
I feel like you’re getting away from the spirit of my comment here/getting carried away with finding exceptions and technicalities to this thread about no game in particular and hypothetical wishlists of features.
I didn’t mean to get caught up in exceptions or exaggerations. I’m no developer either, so I have zero background-knowledge about game-development or game-engines.
Though as I work in IT (again, no developer) and live within a zero-IT-knowledge friend circle, I tend to try and shine a little light on some things that, to the outside, might seem simple but maybe aren’t. I guess sometimes I’m trying to err on the side of caution a little too much.
I definitely think there are a few of those one-line, true/false settings that could just be toggled, especially things that are handled by the engine instead of the game-logic itself, though I cannot speak of experience here.
Checkout the custom settings for Ixion.
Its exactly what they’re asking for, and it works well
Increasingly seeing this in games, and I love it.
Oh, definitely.
Fuck carry weight. Fuck inventory management.
Unless there is a serious, compelling reason and they game is about that, let me turn off micromanage shit. I want to explore the world and dungeons and not worry about whether all the loot I can pick up is worth it or to decide each and every single item whether I want it or what I need to toss to pick it up.
This is exactly it. I don’t understand why people would want to waste any time doing things they don’t want to do vs things they want to do when playing games. The point is fun, whatever that means to the individual.
I was with you at first, thinking you meant in a sandbox game, like turning off hunger/on hardcore in Minecraft, etc. but you’re just whining because every moment isn’t custom built to keep up with your personal ADHD/hedonic treadmill. The point of a game isn’t to just give you a blowjob from launch to credits. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re looking in the wrong place.
but you’re just whining because every moment isn’t custom built to keep up with your personal ADHD/hedonic treadmill.
This is such a weirdly hostile, assumptive and gatekeepy sentiment.
The point of a game isn’t to just give you a blowjob from launch to credits. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re looking in the wrong place.
Your mentality of “this is not what the point of a game is” is especially ridiculous because if a game was that, what I’m advocating for would give you the ability to make it what you want instead.
You really like the word ‘gatekeep,’ as though it were a bad thing. When you walk into a museum, start complaining about the lack of teleporters and strippers, and then get told to leave, yeah, they’re gatekeeping you, but it’s because you’re complaining about the lack of teleporters and strippers in a museum. That’s not what it’s there for. They have curated a collection of experiences focused on creating an overarching experience, and you have wandered in, said ‘I don’t want to have to walk to each exhibit, teleport me,’ and ‘This exhibit is booooooring. Teleport me to the one with strippers.’ If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re looking in the wrong place.
This is such a ridiculously bad faith analogy I feel like it has to be on purpose
It’s actually one of the cleanest, most direct analogies I’ve ever used. Both are curated experiences with controlled visual, auditory, and interactive elements. The differences lie only in the physical/resource limitations each has for the kinds of experiences they can include.
The differences lie only in the physical/resource limitations each has for the kinds of experiences they can include.
Not only is this wrong, but it’s also nonsensical. It is nonsensical because these are massive elements of each experience and why accommodating preferences in one is far easier than the other. Its also wrong because most museum experiences with interaction absolutely have the option to skip parts of said interactions.
The other reason this is wrong, is that these are certainly not the only areas differences lie in, as museums aim to preserve history, and are therefore locked in content wise from that perspective, what with the physical artifacts and care for that. Games are not at all that.
The whole analogy is terrible.
accommodating preferences in one is far easier than the other.
Tell me you’ve never tried to code a complex interactive experience without telling me you’ve never tried to code a complex interactive experience. If you think it’s so easy to take every element of a highly complex, performance sensitive program and make it possible to pick and choose which ones you experience without breaking the whole experience or turning a 1 year project into a 10 year project, go ahead and try. Do you also ask movie directors to make their movies so that when you hit ‘skip scene’ because you don’t like the way the scene looks, it still makes a good movie?
museums aim to preserve history
That’s just your failure to understand there are more kinds of museum than a history museum. A history museum does have special work involved, but others don’t share that element. Perhaps you’ve heard of an art museum, sometimes also known as a gallery. They can contain all sorts of elements, audio, video, scent, touch, taste, human interaction, machine interaction, ludic interaction, whatever. The artifacts can be any age, with art from hundreds of years ago or being created in the moment via performance.
The analogy is a failure, to be sure, but only because I hadn’t considered the possibility you wouldn’t have that piece of common knowledge. Now that you do have that knowledge, though, if you can’t see the analogy, that’s on you.
An FOV slider. I don’t care if you’re a 2D game, you’re honoring totalBiscuit
In his honor, I still lick walls in videogames to this day.
System clock in the top right corner.
Color blind options even for those that aren’t color blind. Sometimes they add a different ui color palette which is fun
The ability to pause should be a requirement for single player games. Not being able to pause long cut scenes, combats, etc. is so frustrating when nobody else is impacted.
Any game completely opposed to pausing for whatever design reason should instead be required to have a minimum of 30 seconds between pauses to allow for interruptions while playing without it allowing for rapid pauses to impact game play. 30 seconds minimum is because of how many interruptions are immediately followed by another interruption by kids/spouses/parents/pets.
Watch Dogs 2 had an “invasion” system like Dark Souls, but it also allowed pausing in the world anytime you weren’t being invaded. It’s been a nice thing to point to anytime Souls fans make that excuse.
Yeah no-pause feature was cool for one or two games as a gimmick, but Jesus h christ I’m an adult now and sometimes you need to freeze everything RIGHT NOW and single player games that you can’t pause are stupid as hell. Like I get maybe not pausing for accessing gear menu. But then at least give us a separate pause in case I have to run to the post office or take a business call or something
I’m sure I have seen it before, but I can’t think of a single game that lets you pause during a cutscene. It really sucks for turn-based games where you need to watch whats happening when it’s not your turn in order to respond correctly.
I remember a game I used to play years ago that had no ability to pause, so what i would do is alt+tab to the task manager and suspend the process, and then resume it later. Obviously that’s way more clunky than just hitting a pause button.
Ghosts of Yotei lets you pause during cut scenes. It doesn’t let you skip most cut scenes, though.
I have played a lot of games where pausing the game to get to game menus pauses cutscenes, generally ones where they use in game assets to do the cut scene. I would have to check to confirm, but I think BG3 let you pause by going to the menu and there was also a separate option to skip the cuts scene.
Definitely played a lot with unskippable cut scenes too. Mostly avoid those games now.
started Red Dead Redemption 1 last night, seems like just hitting esc during cutscene pauses it.
Admittedly I was wanting to go to settings and drop some settings, but that’s only allowed during gameplay, not cutscenes x)
Conversely I can’t remember a game in recent memory that didn’t let me pause in cutscenes.
Just off of my head: Ubisoft games, Control, Shadow of Mordor, Crysis, Witchers, Borderlands 2, Devil May Cry, Celeste had it.
It’s been a very common feature for the last few years and has been very rare before that so it really depends on when you started playing new releases. I’m in my mid-30s and pausing mid-cutscene definitely happended after I stopped being excited about my birthday.
Yeah, I’m probably what you’d call a patient gamer. Usually not playing anything more recent than 5 years old, and often way older.
I recently started another play through of RDR2, while figuring out the settings on my old Linux gaming PC. I’d forgotten how long it is between save points during that oh-so-long first segment up in the mountains. Christ. Having to play for half an hour just to get to a point where I could save up.
Cutscenes especially. The pause button should pause cutscenes, with an option to skip the cutscene on the pause menu. The pause button should never just outright skip the cutscene. It should always pause the cutscene.
So many times as a kid that my mom would walk in and start talking right as a cutscene started. And when I’d go to pause it, it would just skip the entire fucking cutscene instead.
Yeah, pause and skip should be separate things. I have some games pm PC where the ESC key pauses and brings up the menu but to skip the scene you have to be watching it and then hold some specific button like mouse 1 for a couple of seconds to skip. Those are my favorites because I have time to reconsider skipping!
Oh yeah that was the worst. Game devs really shooting themselves in the foot with that design.
Once paused, should it just be a single button? Maybe a menu with an “are you sure? Y/n”, or maybe a hold down one or two buttons together for a couple seconds like on consoles?
