Settings you believe ANY game should have? (This is me advocating for a restart/reboot button on ALL games)
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.
159
Comments245
Motion blur - OFF Screenshake - OFF
Hey now... Don't forget camera bob, "lens dirt," chromatic aberration, and vignette!
AKA - the video game graphics equivalent of "beer goggles."
I'm okay with a little chromatic aberration and vignette. Camera bob can go straight to hell.
Why? It's literally something that pro camera tools have added in-software fixes for to remove them. Like - if you're simulating an old JVC vidicon tube camera and wanting to make something specifically look like an image capture device from a specific time, I get it, but otherwise, it just seems like a way to hide the fact that your graphics aren't quite hitting the realism mark and you think if you obscure it a bit, players will think it looks more "real."
I'm very aware, I've spent quite a bit of time over the years removing them from photography projects.
For vignette, it accomplishes a lot of the same thing in games as it does in photography in general: it is a subtle focus shifter. For some games - like some photos - I enjoy that little bit of extra emphasis on the center of the screen.
For chromatic abberation, i generally avoid it in photography, but it can be used for effect. I feel like that's also true to a point in games. Over the top CA feels like trying to watch something without 3d glasses. A little bit on the fringes can give a smidge of retro (and, oddly, futuristic) style for effectively no compute cost. It's definitely overused though, and I tend to turn it off more often than not.
Agreed on the "shifting focus" part for vignetting specifically - but everything else... outside of specifically tailoring to fit a particular "aesthetic" I think are crutches that are generally used to obscure an overall graphical presentation in order to work in a similar way to how squinting your eyes works.
I agree that highly stylized games like "Bodycam..."
...use things like a specific kind of grain, noise, distortion, aberration, etc. to create a highly appealing visual aesthetic designed to match an actual low-fidelity police body camera, but Battlefield and CoD have much less excuse in my book.
The camera aesthetic stuff only makes sense on things like the AC-130 killstreak in CoD where you're emulating the on-aircraft cameras actually used in the real deal.
I'm glowering hard at No Man's Sky's permanent chromatic aberration effect applied to the top 20% of your viewport at all times, here.
That's what it's being used for? I thought it was for horror games. It does look spooky.
Post Processing - Low usually does the trick 😅
But then it sometimes turns ambient occlusion off too... 😞
Those two features frequently make me nauseous! Being able to turn them off or at least down is a necessity for me.
my friends always want to 'ppay the game the way it was intended'.. cool, I'm still disabling all the crap that makes me not see the game properly.
Also fuck Bloom to hell
Maybe the amount can go to hell, but bloom itself is more realistic in regards to how light and our eyes work.
Internet Connection - On/Off
And by OFF, we mean actually off. The last thing I want is the game to push out a minor update 5 years after its last update, and all of the mods I have are now broken.
Yeah, you should be able to pick a specific version number for single player games. I’m fine with it defaulting to “latest”, but at least give me the option to stick to a specific version.
Also, fuck the “Would you like to share all data with the publisher, or only limited data” bullshit. It’s a single player game with no multiplayer whatsoever. I shouldn’t need to share any data with the publisher. If I see this shit, the game immediately gets blacklisted in my firewall.
That is a reason why offline installers are so important. At the very least we should be able to disable auto updates and still launch the (outdated) game.
Reminds me of one of my biggest pet peeves - a bunch of games will pop up a warning "Oh no, you're not on the Internet! Some stuff won't work!" on start up, always. Hate it, unless I'm trying to connect to a multiplayer mode of some sort.
A setting like this should ideally prevent those.
If there is something better than opensnitch for this on Linux someone tell me. It‘s so annoying to block applications from accessing the internet on it. I‘ve tried like 4 different methods.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ghosts of Yotei lets you pause during cut scenes. It doesn't let you skip most cut scenes, though.
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)
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 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.
All controls should be remappable. All means all. Not most, not some, and certainly none of this bullshit where all you can do is toggle between "XBox 360 controller layout A/XBox 360 controller layout B." This is especially true for titles on consoles, many of which still to this very day don't allow you to remap their controls at all.
For 3D games, field of view. Far too many developers of FPS titles in particular have Console Disease, and feel it's somehow acceptable to lock the FOV to 70° or some absurd number. If they allow you to adjust it at all they may be feeling "generous" enough to let you go as high as 90°. That's completely unacceptable. On my 4K monitor that's 25" from my face, I need at least 120°. Honestly, I want to see that slider go up to 180°. That's right, I want to be able to look at your game world like a goddamned pigeon. On that note I really have to wonder what those people with those 3840x1080 überwide monitors do most of the time, other than spending their days in never ending torment.
Allow me to turn off the stupid pre-launch splash titles. Certainly at least after the first startup. I certainly don't need to be told that nVidia is the way it's meant to be played, or that your company licensed Havok, or who your publisher is, or who your publisher's owner is, or who your publisher's owner's owner is, etc. Nobody cares. Usually instead you have to resort to replacing the .mkv or .bik files in the game folder with zero-byte text files or something. It's dumb.
While we're griping, and speaking of Console-Itis, does every PC game now need to have an unskippable message telling me that this game has auto save and urging me not to turn off my PC when the icon is being displayed? Really? Nobody's going to do that. Tell me your game is a shitty console port without telling me your game is a shitty console port. To keep this on topic, let's have a setting to turn that off, too, because it's stupid. Off by default would be nice. Should there be an Idiot Mode toggle?
Granularity in subtitles. It seems too many games only have two settings: All subtitles off, or they assume you're completely deaf. Typically I want to be able to read what characters are saying in their voice lines, but instead the developers also think I need to see the bottom third of my screen filled with [BOOM] [GUNFIRE] [JUKEBOX MUSIC] [FOOTSTEPS] [BOOM] [GUNFIRE] [BOOM] [BOOM] and so on and so forth, all the time. They should either categorize sounds and make their subtitling things individually selectable, or at least if they insist on making it a slider give it three or four levels: Off, cutscene/conversation dialog only, all spoken lines ("Cover me!" "Reloading!" "Never should have come here!" etc.), and then only the top level resulting in every single cricket and rustle of grass being captioned. Some games do manage to accomplish this. Many do not.
Oh, I thought of a good one to add to my wish list. I want every game to bring back the sound test menu. But they won't, because every studio on Earth now wants you to spend an extra $15 for their game's soundtrack. (As if it's not all going to be on Youtube about twelve seconds after release anyway...)
I can guarantee that those splash titles are included because of contractual obligations. The same way a movie lists the publishing companies in the intro. Including a “skip after first launch” option would violate their contract. If it were up to a game’s director, they would almost universally prefer to drop you straight at the title screen. But they legally aren’t allowed to do so.
Oh, you want us to publish your game? We can require the game designer to show our logo for {x} seconds when the game launches. Oh, you want your game to be G-Sync compatible? Nvidia can require that you show their logo for at least {x} seconds when the game launches. Oh, you want to use our game engine to build your game? Unreal can require that you show their logo for {x} seconds when the game launches. Et cetera…
Quite famously, Unity had a reputational problem because of this. Free users were required to show the splash screen, but companies with larger war chests could pay the higher rate to skip it. It led to Unity being associated with low-budget and amateurish games, while higher quality games running on the same engine, which would be better advertising for Unity, tended to not show the logo.
Verified.
A couple years ago I made a game and used Wwise and was required to have a splash screen at startup
Fully remappable controls is my biggest wish. I hate WASD and swear by EDSF, but some games like Fallout 4 hardcode some controls. E is hardcoded to "interact" or "open door" or something, but the game DOES let you map "move forward" to E. So I can run around like normal, but every time I run past a door it auto opens to a zombie hiding behind it.
To be fair to devs, increasing the FOV has a lot of performance implications on how much less they're culling from the scene as you rotate the camera. In this era of open world games, I suspect it scales very poorly as that FOV increases. Temporarily increasing the FOV is also one of their handy tricks for giving you a sense of speed when you hit a boost button and whatnot, so whatever your FOV is, they need to make it more than that.
Sound test menus are a remnant of arcade design, and when arcades starting dying, this feature made less sense. The OST sale is usually more of a revenue stream for the game's composer, as I understand it.
That might be fine for consoles which have known performance limitations built in. But if I'm on my PC, let me make that decision. Don't try to make it for me.
I understand the desire, but then that might have implications on support tickets, advertised system requirements, separate maintenance and optimizations for only one platform, etc. It might be that turning up the FOV even a smidge over their maximum requires a super computer that doesn't even exist yet, depending on what it has to render and how it works under the hood.
Given I've never seen that actually become the case even in games with engines I had to apply configuration hacks to increase the FOV, I find all of that highly unlikely.
Please stop making excuses for lazy and disrespectful devs
This one, along with “press any button to start”, annoy me so much. There is absolutely no reason to have to press a button before even entering the main menu. If you need it to determine the type of input device, that can be the first press on the menu.
Treat PC games as PC games, even if you make them cross platform.
Sliders are the problem.
They encourage a maximum and a minimum.
Just let people enter values.
An option to choose what controller glyphs I want to use (Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, directional) and a option to always use those glyphs even when mouse input is detected, so I can use Gyro without the glyphs constantly flickering ☺️
I prefer the 4 circles glyphs that shows the appropriate face button highlighted. It's device agnostic and helpful when I'm switching between playing on my Switch and playing on my PC with an Xbox controller.
That's what I meant by directional, I wish more games had it!
This would be killer!
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
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
I like this, and I think it should be complemented with a "Save and Quit to OS" button.
pausing during cutscenes - it's weird that this isn't always an option even in AAA
Also skipping them, please.
This is totally unrealistic but it would be sweet if there was a button for showing you a compilation of recent cutscenes or something for when you havnt played a story heavy game in a while and forgot what’s going on.
Like in the main menu give me a memory button or whatever that basically brings me up to speed to where I left off. Could be replaying cutscenes or showing me text of recent events, who knows 🤷♀️
But there are too many times i have to put a deep rpg down and then life gets in the way and picking it up again becomes impossible when it doesn’t feel like I’m there anymore
One of the latter Final Fantasies did this. I think it was 13? Despite that game's many other rather glaring shortcomings, that part was pretty neat. I agree it should definitely be standard for most RPG and heavily story driven games.
I’ve seen a variety of half baked implementations. Sometimes you have a decent in game log but sometimes it’s also just the dialogue of your last conversation and nothing more 🥲
Oddly enough I think that porn games are a little closer to do what you suggest because rewatch the cutscenes is kinda important it seems in that genre 😅
Relatedly, I've noticed ports of console games, particularly by Japanese devs, and especially Sqeenix, not actually having an option to quit to desktop. Sometimes hitting Esc will pop a plain system theme window with an option to close the program, but I've seen ones that didn't even have that and had to be killed externally. It's not as bad as it used to be, but even exiting DragonQuest 11 is a pain.
This is also hella common in a lot of online or multiplayer live service games recently. Forces you to alt-F4 if on PC. Especially bad with Sony's playstation ports; they treat it like you're on the PS5 and can just switch games to automatically close the running one.
I just want to let you know that when I was director of production at a multimedia studio, one of the rules in my ux design "bible" was that an interface must never present an "are you sure" prompt to a Quit action. Yes there were fights over it.
Historically, it was conventional to have a "you have unsaved work" in a typical GUI application if you chose to quit, since otherwise, quit was a destructive action without confirmation.
Unless video games save on exit, you typically always have "unsaved work" in a video game, so I sort of understand where many video game devs are coming from if they're trying to implement analogous behavior.
That's a save changes? prompt, not an are you sure? prompt.
might sharing that, i had kinda started my own recently but curious if i missed anything obvious
I just mash mod key + backspace on hyprland to kill it haha. Bye mfer!
But also sometimes lately hyprland hasn't been playing as nice with steam games and my mouse doesn't interact with the game. The fix I found is to fling the steam client over to the other monitor. Works I guess. Linux problems lol.
Games that honor alt-f4 INSTANTLY are amazing
There's a roguelike I play, which combats save-scumming by only giving one save slot per character. And so the only reason to save the game, is when you're done playing. So, you hit Ctrl+S to save, and it instantly quits as well. 🙃
Which is interesting, because at least for me, the main reason I try to save often like that is because of games like bethesda games or other games that don't autosave and will crash, losing you HUGE amounts of progress.
Ah yeah, it does auto-save regularly, too. But I don't think, I've ever seen it crash without me doing some out-of-game fuckery. 🙃
Well, and of course, losing progress is baked into the gameplay of a roguelike, so whether your savegame corrupts or you die yet another stupid death, you just start another run and you're right back into the action.
Hopefully you never accidentally click the Quit button when you didnt mean to, lol
If I'm going to put 100+ hours into a game, there better be a setting to mute BGM, because no matter how good the OST is I will eventually tire of it and want to listen to something else.
I’d love it if a group could collude on a standard for music signals.
Imagine this: You have a music player following this signal standard.
Game starts, it signals GAME_STARTED, and the media player signals STOP_GAME_MUSIC, so the game itself plays no BGM, leaving it to the music player. But, then the game can also signal later on: THEME_MENUS, THEME_EXPLORE, THEME_COMBAT, THEME_BOSS; and the media player can respond to that by cross fading between playlists built for each.
Similarly, granular audio options that separate dialogue from ambient from music from system sounds. Definitely don’t need my ears blown out just to hear dialogue.
I like having the background music very low, but not off, system sounds a bit above that, sound effects higher than system but lower than dialogue, which is maxed. And of course ambient sound levels really depend on the game and what kind of ambiance it has.
Same thing with granular contrast/gamma/etc. Don’t just provide a few preset options, especially if they can only be set before you start the game (also they should never only be set from the main menu, never). Let the player choose whatever they want on the fly. I love playing with everything bright so I can see wtf I’m doing, I don’t give half a shit if the devs think it should be so dark it’s not navigable. I disagree.
Enterable values for mouse sensitivity.
No sliders.
I'm talking, down to at least the thousandths place decimal, and up as high as I fucking want. This allows your mouse sensitivity to not only account for how you play, but also how everybody else plays.
And if you're one of those devs that has the aiming be different than mouse cursor, or even MULTIPLE mouse cursor speed settings, HAVE ENTERABLE VALUES FOR THOSE TOO!!
Sometimes I'm at 1% and it's too high still.
Sometimes I'm at 1% and it's too low and 2% is too high.
Every time I see a slider for any damn setting that ends up going from, say, 3.48 to 3.51 unless I go REALLY SLOWLY, in which case maybe it goes 3.48 3.49, 3.51, or whatever nonsense where I can't just get my nice round number. Let me type the stupid number.
also, a standard to mouse sens values, a value of 10 should be same across everything, games made in the same engine usually handle the values the same which is great, I for example have the same sens across all source games, but this usually doesnt carry to diferent engines let alone random one off games with custom engines
Fucks sake this for me. Why the fuck there isn't standardization between games on this is beyond me. I have to go through fucking with mouse sensitivity on every damn game. This is part of the reason I died out of multiplayer tbh.
Here’s a simple one. On PC, a lot of games let you use the keyboard/mouse or a controller. On some games it’ll switch the prompts to the layout of the last type of input you used. However I tend to use a controller for everything, except I’ll use a mouse for more fine tuned control since I suck at aiming with a joystick. But then what happens is the input notifications switch to keyboard/mouse and sometimes don’t switch back.
I’d love to see an option to force which input style gets displayed on screen. Keyboard/Controller/Auto
And some games don't let you use both at the same time!
That was the worst. One time I had a remote desktop host software running, nothing was even connected, but it was detected first or something stupid, and I couldn't input the game at all. What an absolute nightmare to troubleshoot. I ended up just never actually playing that game with those friends because I couldn't, and everybody ended up not playing more of it or any of the sequels as a result.
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.
Customisable difficulty. Have a single or multiple presets balanced to what you'd like your players to experience but give me an option to adjust some of the stuff to my liking. There are SO MANY games I'd love to play way more than I do but none of the difficulty options feel "right", bringing the whole experience down.
It's also a great feature from an accessibility standpoint - pretty important thing for those who literally can't play your game for reasons that could be easily worked around if such customisation was there.
"But my artistic integrity and vision!"
No, shut up. Your vision doesn't mean squat if my experience with the game is annoying to the point where I don't even care about the lore implication of an enemy placement or how gameplay systems intertwine with themes and story of the game. It's important, sure, but it shouldn't be more important than player's enjoyment of your product.
Balance your game how you imagine it but let me play with the sliders to make it feel how I want it to. Just drop a scary message about it not being the intended way to play and it'll be fine.
I think it'd be better to have assist modes than difficulty options. As difficulty is traditionally associated with changing things like health and damage (or worse, opaquely disabling mechanics) that are fundamental to game balance I think it is too easy to be abused as a cop out from having to balance the game.
Things like slowing the pace of the game, adding aim assist, visual indicators for audio cues, more lenient hit boxes, more frequent saves would be way more useful imo. Optional mechanics or modifiers can exist, but they shouldn't be bundled with other random stuff.
I completely agree that accessibility/assist modes are more important and if I had to choose I'd go with that. Since we're in a fantasy land however I'm still going to advocate for customisation because, let's be honest, most of the difficulties (besides "the main one") are usually not that great.
I'm speaking from a perspective of someone who tends to go for the higher difficulty options which extremely often go with the laziest possible decisions like turning enemies into damage sponge and increasing their attack power. That's it. Stuff like improved enemy awareness, faster reaction times, smarter tactics aren't exactly common and that's my main pain point when selecting difficulty. There are also other things like ammo/loot scarcity, need drain in survival games etc.
Having an option to tweak at least some of these things could help folks like me who often end up in a situation when one difficulty is piss easy and the other feels like a drag. Peoples skills and expectations vary way too and there's simply no way few basic difficulty settings will be right for everyone. And if someone damages their experience? Oh well, let people make mistakes and take responsibility for their choices. Inform them that changing this stuff will affect their experience and leave them to their decisions. We can't (and shouldn't) baby-proof everything, in my opinion.
I'm fine with that, dishonored 2 did a really good job of this with its custom difficulty option. I'd argue that games should just have 1 difficulty, developers can balance around that. Let people mess with any of the easy values difficulty modes usually change
I'd be down with that. Or at the very least give us modifiers like skulls in Halo games - dunno if that's just Master Chief Collection addition or if they became a thing after 1 but it's better than nothing.
Nah, miss me with this bullshit. Not every game is for you, and it doesn't have to be. An artist is not required to water down their vision because you're picky.
I have successfully (?) played (sometimes semi-suffered, cough, Sekiro) through a buncha popular hard games and have a way less „strong“ opinion on this but also think that an „easy mode“ as an accessibility feature is a good thing.
If, for example, a parent wants to connect with their child and also experience that game they‘re playing, it‘s really no big deal to me if they could turn on easy mode in, say, Sekiro to stand a chance. Not like it‘d impact my own experience at all, and I don‘t feel the need to force them to go through my own experience either. In Celeste, for instance, you can literally fly through the whole game if it makes you happy, and yet I still grabbed all strawberries the normal way and don‘t care if others did as well or just flew to them.
It‘s less of a demand from me and more of a „if you can you should definitely include it,“ though. Obviously doesn‘t work for full on competitive multiplayer titles or something similar though.
Not even sure how much of this addresses your remark specifically, but my feelings on this felt best placed below yours lol
Sekiro can be used to make an interesting point about easy mode. One could argue that the first playthrough is the easy mode because in new game plus you can give away Kuro's charm which means only perfect blocks prevent chip damage. Does easy mode mean it has to easier or does it mean it has to be without challenge?
Absolutely. Normal is easy mode, charmless is normal mode and charmless with bell demon is true hard mode. After I completed a charmless run, normal really did feel so much easier.
Whether it should have a dedicated "easy" mode or not, I'm really torn. It took me months to get through my first playthrough but the sense of achievement was immense and like no other gaming experience before. I simply wouldn't have had that feeling without the struggle. But I also have no accessibility concerns so it's a very one sided opinion.
I'm fully of the opinion that difficulty is a matter of determination. If a quadriplegic can beat Elden Ring then I really don't know what kind of a disability someone would have to have to not be able to play difficult games.
I'm not against difficulty options. I turn the difficulty down in some games because I think the higher difficulties simply funnel you into a certain playstyle (looking at you Bethesda). But difficulty options IMO are more of am accessibility for the sake of convenience rather than a necessity and as such I don't think every game requires difficulty options.
A fair take. I think I agree.
Video games are the only art medium where people find it acceptable to gate-keep the art from the unskilled or the disabled.
Imagine buying a movie ticket, then the theater goes “no you aren’t good enough at watching movies to watch this movie. You only get to see the first 10 minutes. It just isn’t for you.” Imagine paying to go to a museum, and they tell you “sorry, you are only allowed to look at the art in the foyer because you aren’t good enough to enter the rest of the museum.”
Difficulty settings are, first and foremost, accessibility settings. Don’t want the game to be too easy? Don’t fucking turn down the difficulty. Saying “I don’t want the game to be easier” is really just saying “I know I don’t have any self-control, and would inevitably turn down the difficulty when I hit a roadblock.”
Yes, deaf people are famously well-accomodated by music, and paintings are always very accessible to the blind. Games are the first medium to ever be inaccessible to people.
You're complaining about players opinions, but I'm saying the artist is not required to sacrifice their vision for accessibility reasons. Not all art is for everyone, and that's fine. You don't have to play every game.
That’s a pretty ignorant take. I work in a music venue and art gallery as an event planner and curator, so it’s pretty funny that you listed those two things specifically. I personally know three blind artists who consistently blow me away with what they are able to produce.
One has tunnel vision, and can see an area about the size of a quarter held at arms’ length. He tends to work with textiles and wood carvings, which he can feel.
The second can see shades of brightness, but very little color; she primarily works in shades of grey or sepia. She has a bright light over her workbench, so she can see the contrast as she lays down darker material that soaks up the light.
The third went fully blind in his 20’s due to a degenerative condition. He grew up with full vision, then he had to adapt later in life as his vision degenerated. He uses paint thinner to thin out the various colors to different consistencies, so he can feel which colors are where. I have one of his prints hanging on my office wall right now, and it is absolutely breathtaking even before you learn he’s fucking blind.
Art galleries have taken steps to make things like paintings accessible to blind patrons. Unless it’s something like watercolor that soaks into the canvas and lays flat, paint has depth and texture. Especially thicker paints like oils. 3D scans of paintings allow people to feel the paint layers on printed busts. Artists like Van Gogh used paint texture as an inherent part of their piece, and galleries have attempted to turn that into a tactile experience. You haven’t truly seen Starry Night until you have seen it in person, (or at least seen a 3D scan of it). Flat prints simply don’t do it justice. And for other mediums, guided tours have descriptive service options for blind patrons.
And we get deaf/HoH patrons at concerts all the time. They enjoy the crowd experience, and they can feel the beat via vibration. Hell, I just organized a concert for next week, where we have an ASL interpreter. Deaf/HoH people regularly have music fucking blaring on kick ass sound systems. They may be able to hear certain parts of it if it’s loud enough, or maybe they just enjoy the beat. But regardless of the reason, they absolutely can enjoy music.
You gave lots of examples that accommodate these disabilities, and that's awesome and obviously I support that!
What you aren't arguing for anywhere in this comment is that every artist be required to do these things. Somehow game developers are exempt from this grace? You called out watercolor but don't appear to be angry at watercolor artists like you are at game developers. Why are all games required to accommodate all people, but other art isn't? Why is that where your line is drawn?
Quite the opposite. I fully believe that if art can be accessible, it should be. That’s why I listed things like 3D scans for oils, descriptive services, or textiles and sculptures that people can feel.
And things like ASL interpreters are legally required by law, and we as the venue can be sued if we refuse to make reasonable efforts to accommodate them. We can’t even charge those patrons extra for tickets, despite the fact that the ASL interpreter is more expensive than the entire price of their ticket. If they request it within a reasonable timeframe, we are legally obligated to hire an interpreter for the show that the patron will be at, even though we know we will lose money on it. We can’t even ask for proof that the person is deaf, because that would put an undue burden on the person with the disability; We just have to take them at their word, and hire the ASL interpreter on blind faith that they’re not forcing us to spend money extraneously.
We also have hearing assist devices integrated into our sound system, for the HoH patrons who just need a private audio feed. We can provide either wireless headphones, or a magnetic loop which hearing aids can tune into. So they have the option of controlling the volume directly with headphones, or using the hearing aids they already have and like. That cost is taken on entirely by the venue, because it allows those HoH patrons to get a similar experience as the rest of the audience. Because (again) the law requires that we make reasonable accommodations to ensure every patron (including those with disabilities) gets an equivalent experience.
As someone who regularly has to do extra work to accommodate people with disabilities: People with disabilities shouldn’t be excluded from art simply because it is extra effort to accommodate them. Accessibility isn’t something that should be optional, because it helps everyone eventually. Would you argue against accessibility ramps for building entrances, because it would ruin the architect’s artistic vision for a grand staircase? Would you argue against subtitles for a movie, because it would take up screen space that the director had intentionally used for action? Would you argue against Velcro or bungie-lace shoes, because the fashion designers had flat laces in mind when they designed it? Would you argue against audiobooks for blind people, because the author is dead and couldn’t collaborate to choose a narrator that fit their artistic vision? No? So why is other art required to take reasonable steps to provide accommodations, but video games aren’t? Why is that where your line is drawn?
Would it be better if every piece of art was accessible like this? Yes.
Same goes for games. That's what this thread is: it would be better if every game had X
You believe some forms of art shouldn't exist at all just because a small percentage of people can't experience it? Watercolor as an art form should be abolished? Music without strong bass shouldn't be allowed? All paintings must incorporate strong textures?
Absolutely wild.
I'm not opposed to more options but I think this tactic is distracting and generates more pushback than it wins converts.
Are games art? I'd say so, usually. Some are more like toys than art, but many have creative expression
If they are are, must all art be accessible to all people? Well, what does accessible mean exactly? To understand it completely? Then I'd say trivially no, because there are many books that are incomprehensible to many people. No one is going to say "House of Leaves" is inaccessible and the author did a gatekeeping by writing it as such. No one is going to say Finnegans Wake is ableist because it's hard to understand.
Must all aspects of all art be completable by all people? I'd also say trivially no. You might have a segment in French that doesn't translate well. You can dub it or subtitle it, but the original experience will remain inaccessible unless the audience spends years mastering French.
I bring that up because some games will have within the game, not a metagame menu setting, easier or harder routes. For example, Elden Ring with a big shield and spirit ashes is significantly easier than a naked parry build. Is the expectation that everyone should be able to finish in both styles? If there's a hard mode, must everyone be able to finish it?
Should everyone be able to trivially 100% every game?
Personally I think the floor is everyone should be able to interface with the game. Change inputs. Add subtitles.
I don't really think "I can't party this spear guy" is an accessibility problem the same way "I'm color blind and can't read the text" is.
But again, I don't care if someone wants a god-mode with auto-parry. It just feels like it's bundling some unrelated ideas together. You're not necessarily disabled if you're bad at parrying in dark souls.
I have to disagree with this. Difficulty settings are at best a bandaid solution to accessibility. The vast vast majority of difficulty settings change the overall gameplay experience, games are far too complex for 'just make it easier' to be an appropriate approach to accessibility.
Just reducing enemy health, simplifying enemy ai, etc. can only make a game more accessible as a side effect, it doesn't address the actual accessibility issues people might have.
I also don't think games should have hard modes. They should have exactly 1 difficulty the developers balance around.
There absolutely should be accessibility options that have the side effect of making the game easier but making the game easier is the wrong approach to make it accessible.
My suggestion would be stuff like tuning response windows to the results of a reaction time test, aim assist options, visual cues for sound effects, etc. Those make the game easier but do it by addressing a single specific issue, or combination of issues, someone's dealing with instead of just slapping on a one size fits all solution.
Monopoly has been one of the most popular board games for about a century, and hardly anyone plays by all of the official rules. Once I buy a game, if I want to play with house rules, I should be able to. Putting the sliders and such in game, even with the warning message mentioned above, just makes it easier to do so without having to rely on the community to make mods.
I would like to experience more artistic works, but after two strokes, my right hand is nearly useless.
Miss me with your ableist bullshit.
I agree to an extent but there's a difference between "we made a specific design choice because it fits with what we want the game to convey" and "well, normal mode works like X and feels super easy to anyone experienced with gaming but on hard all the enemies are bullet sponges with 5x HP and player dies in one hit". The latter approach brings nothing to the table and that's what I'm against. Plus already mentioned accessibility options for those who need them.
Besides, many games ALREADY HAVE easy modes - giving me ability to adjust things manually (which in my case is usually up, not down) wouldn't affect their vision any more than it's already possible.
I'm generally with you, but there are implications for the online game and matchmaking in the likes of Dark Souls games. By the time they got to Elden Ring, they seemed to care way less about things like invasions.
Oh totally, I'm mostly focusing on solo and co-op titles like Terraria/Minecraft/Raft or whatever is popular for multiplayer these days. That said, it's not like Souls games have to by played with online functionality even now - it's already off when not in human form after all.
It's not a perfect choice for every single title but a good chunk of games could support it without worrying about matchmaking and the like.
I like how No Man's Sky implemented it:
Yup, something like this or simple sliders would be an ideal solution for what I'm talking about - preferably both, depending on whether the setting is a numerical one or not. It doesn't have to be a completely granular access to every value, I just want enough control to adjust the experience when things are close but not exactly right.
Local server
Edit: or any server
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.
Chromatic aberration and film grain. If your game has either of those and no way to turn them off, I wish you a slow, painful death and I will probably refund it.
And that movement blur, whatwasitsname?
Amen
separe audio settings for bgm, sound effects, etc
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.
Pause and save during cutscenes.
I cannot name the amount of times I've tried to press escape and skipped a cut scene when all I'm trying to do is bring up the menu to pause. I'll add to this 'cinema mode' which some games have. Let's you go in and view cutscenes again. Should be standardized.
Subtitles for the hearing impaired. Like when a switch flicks it writes click on the screen.
I'm not impaired, but I like to have the sound down for stealth gaming.
Take it a step further, and require optional direction indicators. Not only do you get click on screen. You also have an option to get a little arrow pointing to which direction it came from. I have several friends with a bad ear. They can hear fine out of one ear, but not the other. That direction indicator allows them to track sound cues that would otherwise be useless to them.
The newer God of War games were pretty good about this, for instance. There were collectable ravens, which were usually found via sound cues; they would loudly caw for you to be able to track them down before you saw them. But if you only have one good ear, you can’t tell which direction the sound is coming from. The direction indicator bridges that gap, by adding a little arrow next to the raven cawing sound alert. For a more straightforward example, if an NPC says something, you get an arrow pointing to the NPC. Handy for when random NPCs have off-screen chatter.
"Best I can do is Mario loudly saying "Good Bye!" when you close your Nintendo DS to hide under your pillow."
~ Nintendo
Adjustable HUD offset for widescreen.
I have a 32:9 display and it SUCKS when HUD elements are anchored to the sides. I have to turn my head to see it!
And FOV axis setting. I hate when there's a limit on X axis FOV slider and it's still not wide enough for SUW
I get enough of this from my glasses, thanks.
the bane of my eyes. I don't have glasses, but holy hell this effect starts to strain my eyes when games have it.
Yeah any setting that tries to make things photoreal needs to be able to be turned off. Fringing, vignette, motion blur. What's next? Strobing? Jfc. Like yeah those can all look really good if tumed properly. But tuning for everybody's monitor and everybody's room ambient light or sunlight is really tough. Let people at least turn them off, and if you've got time, you can add in some changeable values.
Not a setting, but a "here's what you did last time/here's where you need to go now". If it's been a little while since I played the game, I shouldn't be lost trying to figure out where I am or where I'm going.
I'm playing Pokemon Moon right now and as annoying as the rotom can be I find the recap useful if maybe a little bit hand holdy.
Pause on focus loss/main menu. It's so simple, but often missing.
Toggleable, please.
Same do it some don't. Standardization would be great! I personally HATE when a game pauses when I tab to something else but I can see the benefit for others.
...with a toggle in settings.
Please let me invert y-axis for games where I control the field of view. Nothing takes me out of a game like suddenly staring at my feet when I try to look up.
And x-axis, just to be thorough. Especially for third person games since they still can't all agree on what the default should be.
Also how 'full potato' do you want it to be? I assume the settings don't scale below low, so it'd be just turning off shadows, reflections etc. Would even the lowest resolution textures fit in the vram of an older card? And besides, the engine is probably designed for modern multi core cpus so even if the graphics could be scaled down it might not run well
I always dread picking up a new game that is kinda demanding on the hardware because I hate to keep testing all graphical settings to have the best graphics with good fps. The least they could do is show a split scene with each setting on or off so you can judge with your eyes, but a button that you set the fps and the game crunches some numbers and benchmark to find the best quality graphics settings it can do at the target fps.
If it can adjust the graphics on demand would also be awesome because some games can have variable demands during gameplay.
If your game supports controller give me the option to change the button faces to whatever I prefer. Some people like Nintendo button layout, others PlayStation, other Xbox. Whatever it is, don't hard code one set - they're just some pngs, support them all.
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.
Save&quit at any time
So I can just boot up the game, play for 15 minutes and go do other stuff
Yeah, the steam deck does this, it's a great feature.
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.
Everything should be controllable. Give me all the options. Every graphical feature, every UI element, even gameplay mechanics. If it is as simple as adjusting a number or selecting something from a table, give me the option to control it myself.
Okay you can now control the shadow casting behavior of every single entity in the game individually. Happy?
A combined off switch for TAA, Ray Tracing, DLSS, frame generation, and all of that nonsense.
I hate that games now turn to soup when in motion, even with motion blur off.
A combined button would be great, but just having all of these settings able to be directly turned off would be great.
????
Why have you included ray tracing and DLSS among the actual blur causers?
Ray Tracing is still not good enough and needs "de-noising" which basically just blurs the image.
DLSS is also absolutely horrible for blur. I would rather have a clear pixelated image than an upscaled mess. (And AMD superFX is barely any better)
Do you not know how DLSS works? I almost never find sacrificing clarity for FPS an improvement
A negligible downgrade in visual fidelity and a few shimmers for more performance.
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
Give me a way to replay cutscenes, and history of dialog.
Save and exit to desktop straight away with no going back to the main menu before. I'm looking at you Dark Souls series! It's like the developers have never used a computer for anything not related to writing code before.
Nude mode. We're all grown ups here.
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.
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.
Only if it.works both ways. Dong physics, anyone?
I just want a exit to desktop button always available. I don't always have time to go all the way back to the title screen just to edit out.
Alt+F4 usually works for that
Adding a reboot button is ONLY necessary if the game isn't made correctly. There is otherwise no reason to ever need to restart the game. I would see the addition of a restart option as lazy or an admission of failure by the dev.
I could still see it as an admission of imperfection.
Arc Raiders includes an “unstuck” feature. They’re aware their physics system isn’t infallibly perfect, and getting stuck permanently could lead to loss of hard-earned gear. So, if a player is in one spot for more than a minute, they offer an option to teleport you to a safe place a few feet away.
Windowed borderless mode
I should probably know this, but what's the deal with full screen vs windowed full screen? What's the difference?
Also why do people wanna play windowed? Maybe depends on the type of game..?
Alt tab out to other apps without the game freaking out due to display settings
Oh I see this makes sense. And theoretically better performance in full screen?
I never saw a major performance difference, but being able to switch windows without the game possibly crashing is great. Especially in single player games, sometimes you just need to pause and check laundry, or check email. Alt tab and good to go.
That's the benefit I use it for. Some games force minimize when you tab off and they can crash when you try to tab back to them.
There used to be a noticeable graphics performance boost to an app when in full screen mode, but that was back in Windows 7 days and may not be true any more.
Game in one window, other things open in other windows. Game and do other things at the same time.
I never understood why people prefer it over full screen.
It enables quick window switching with no flickering. This may be a strictly Windows issue.
No issues on linux
Yeah you're probably right. On Linux I just Ctrl Alt right arrow to my next virtual desktop and it's instant and seamless.
Genuine question: what issue does this address? Are there graphics driver issues with regular full screen in some cases?
Some games minimize and try to lock your mouse to the game if you alt tab out. Windowed mode makes it pretty much seamless, pain free. No difference I ever found, just easier to alt tab out and check a map, take notes, pause and watch a video.
System clock in the top right corner.
Another commented said Fully Remappable Controls, but I want to foot stomp it. On PC games, I use EDSF instead of WASD, but if some controls can't be remapped and they overlap with EDSF then I won't play the game.
On console, I fucking hate that Elden Ring maps "crouch/sneak" to pushing down on the movement stick. I'm furiously fighting for my fucking life against a boss that attacks every 0.7 seconds. I'm moving that stick as fast as I can, which means I'm pushing hard on it. It sucks to be trying to run away from an attack but then start crouching and sneaking away from a 40ft tall axe coming down on you.
I tend to clutch the remote when stressed. It's highly frustrating when I'm in the middle of an intense gunfight and suddenly my character tries to melee. Having to push down and hold a thumb stick while doing other actions with my fingers makes my hand sore as well.
Multiplayer games should have toggles to allow more than 4 people. Why do we need to install mods or change a 4 to a 6 in some config file?
This obviously doesn't work for games like It Takes Two where more than 2 players would be senseless, but your survivalcraft game shouldn't be limited in the same way.
Problem is that the fancy graphics stuff isn't just additive.
For example, raytracing is actually relatively simple to implement, since you just make light behave like it does in real-world physics, according to a couple relatively straightforward rules and material properties.
Lighting without raytracing involves tons of
smokes and mirrorshacks and workarounds. For example, mirrors were often faked by building the same room behind the wall, with everything inverted, including the player character's animations.So, making a game with potato graphics typically requires building a second version of the game.
Of course, there can be a mode that does just turn off the additive stuff, so only that which does not require changing the game implementation. But that can just be one of the graphics presets...
Mute while in background aka stfu I'm tabbed out ffs
Also just plain support that. Too many games lock up or outright crash if they lose focus.
Games with third person peaking should have server options for first person only.
The thing about that is thats a big playerbase split
in general: settings which have multiple levels, display it as a slider so I can visually see which ones are actually maxed out and which arent. It's insanity when most settings have off/low/med/high/higher and randomly some of them have additional levels like epic/ultra/psycho/gigaultrapseudobullshit. You have to go each and everyone through to figure out which have higher settings. Now, this is not a flex, my system can't run new games on gigaultrapseudobullshitultra++, but older ones? sure.
for fps & tps games: FOV.
otherwise, in no particular order, option to toggle off entirely:
otherwise, must haves:
Games should not have preset color options for people with colorblindness. Games almost NEVER do them correctly or offer good enough options. They should just give users full-blown color pickers for whatever gameplay elements require them and let users decide for themselves what colors work best.
I'm very curious. Can you elaborate on how that would work?
Any game with a free cam should have the option to turn off 3d fly. Trying to perfectly position a camera while having to constantly turn in order to not go up or down while trying to slightly reposition has got to be one of the most annoying things.
I can't think of a setting that would universally apply to all games, like I'd be hard pressed to say a setting in Tetris that would apply to Minecraft. Vision and auditory accessibility is probably about it, but those settings would look pretty different I think depending on the game or genre of game.
I'm not sure about every game but I'd like to see a lot more games do what Rebel Galaxy did and let you set up paths for custom OST. No game dev can license the perfect soundtrack for every player, but it's great to be able to slot in what I feel makes the perfect soundtrack. Some people want their fight scenes to be scored with DMX, some want Burzum, and some want the Cronos Quartet. Let them all find their moment.
For this reason, "if", by mindless self indulgence always brings me back to wipeout HD on PS3.
I had that album set and it sure was an anger for that game.
"Never wanted to dance with nobody like you!"
I personally love that Rockstar has been allowing this by letting people set up their own radio that plays in-game. I myself have 763 songs on my GTA V/Online Self Radio :V
Colorblind options that let me specifically choose the color of each HUD/UI element. I don't want an overlay for the whole game, I just want to be able to distinguish icons in the UI that might have color-coding too similar for my eyes to perceive at a glance
Ohh, that type of setting.
One option I really appreciated in Uncharted 4 was the ability to restart cutscenes, and I wish it was in every game with cutscenes.
You just reminded me of a funny feature I found in Elite Dangerous (space MMO) to prevent combat logging (quitting suddenly during combat like a little b***h): if you press Alt+F4, the game doesn't immediately exit, but shows you a Quit dialog (to main menu or desktop), and there's a lengthy countdown if you're near hostile ships. :)
Doesn't prevent it entirely, but I thought it was pretty crafty.
Subtitles. I wish I could have suuttiles for halo, the early games. It's getting better these days, and should be a setting accessible before starting the game (not after the intro movie, I'm looking at you vanilla wow).
Let me choose my own resolution.
I dunno... Depends on the game. If you make a window wide enough you'd start seeing what's behind you, and that might not be very fair in certain games lol. It might not be very easy to aim but that can be learned. 😅
Well...
I could also set my own resolution with the config files (rocket league at last at the time allowed it) or I also could set my own resolution in my gpu driver.
So what's the issue then?
For example, I can't choose an ultrawide 1080p resolution in Cyberpunk2077.
Any game usually let's me set the usual values (like 1920x1080, 1280x720, 4:3 resolutions, 16:10 resolutions, etc etc). So why not let me choose the custom resolution of 2560x1080p ???
I'm just saying in certain games setting your custom resolution could be considered cheating.
For example in competitive first person shooters, if you play on a 16:9 monitor, and you set the resolution to be a ratio much, much wider than your monitor, you will see all the way around the player in 360°. This is how graphics projection math works. Or it did when I last dabbled in writing a graphics engine.
So I can understand some games not allowing certain odd ratios and FOVs in combination.
Otherwise I agree, of course we should be able to set a resolution that matches our monitors that we have. 😊👍
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.
Color blind options even for those that aren’t color blind. Sometimes they add a different ui color palette which is fun
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is such a weirdly hostile, assumptive and gatekeepy sentiment.
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.
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.
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?
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.
The first time I boot up the game, immediately show me the settings menu. Whether its window settings, sound volume, subtitles, or graphics settings, please do not make me sit through a long cutscene or (god forbid) make me play the game without being able to adjust settings first. Sometimes the window is screwed up, the graphics are pushing my system too hard, or any number of other issues on first boot.
I can think of 1 or 2 games that booted to settings or booted to a truncated settings menu with common settings, but I would love if this became standard for all PC games.
Silly Mode, ofc
Grappling hook with freedom on wear to place it, swinging physics, idc if it makes sense, ill take it in all games. And wingsuit gliding, I may have been one of the only few ppl online who liked that in battlefield. Such a fun way to traverse the map.