Gameplay is King?: What Gameplay improvements can be achieved on the new consoles?

[BadTB25]

I wish fighting games would improve on being more “realistic”. Instead of power-bars/meters; a percentage system that naturally tracks and ranks hits, combos, and bodily injuries. The data isn’t visible during the match, only after the fight is completed.

I’m a big fan of the MK series, but the X-RAY moves should render a person severely injured or dead… it’s like everyone is f****ing Wolverine or something.

I really hope I never see this happen. Give me a new Marvel, Killer instinct, SF, etc with better grapics and maybe some evolution of the core gameplay mechanics. Those games are made great because of meter management, Supers, EX moves, and over the top "non realistic" silliness.

For what you want, UFC and maybe a new title can go for it, but leave the classic franchises alone regarding that thought.

Leave my Hadokens and Bezerker Barrages alone.

 

[function]

The problem with that kind of complexity is someone has to test it to make sure it works and doesn't give ridiculous results.

Ridiculous results can be part of the fun! They gave us the mighty rocket jump!

 

[Commenter]

The problem with that kind of complexity is someone has to test it to make sure it works and doesn't give ridiculous results.

I'm sure the component parts of such a simulation would have go through many many iterations before being reaching a perfect state and not necessarily all at the same time.

 

[onQ]

The crazy thing about cloud compute is that it could do wonders for AI but it also beg the question of why are you connected to the internet to play against smart AI when you could actually be playing against real people?


But one way I can see cloud computed AI being really useful is in a every man for himself MMO where your only teammates are the AI players that you train. So say you are not online but someone is attacking your village the cloud computed AI can fight just as you would if you was online & also send a message to your smart phone to keep you up to date on what's going on & you could give orders from your phone while the AI do the fighting for you.

 

[Nesh]

Unless we move on to an entirely new control scheme (i.e. plugging our brains right into the computer and controlling characters just like how we control our bodies), I mostly wish developers would stop pursuing this. We don't currently have the granular control required to make this stuff result from player control in an immediate way, which means pursuing it effectively takes control away from the player. There is a ton of clunkiness in modern game controls as a result of this stuff, and no obvious way around it.

I remember reading the second paragraph of this section of Rockslider's thoughts on Halo 2 back in the day. I agreed with that. And now that it's 2014? I remember being overjoyed in Lightning Returns just because I made the player character run up a ladder fluidly and with minimally annoying mount and dismount animations.

Developers arent pursuing this and the developers are free to change whatever has negative impact on the gameplay. So far what you see are canned/staged scenes that only apply to limited occasions determined by the developer. This is why all attempts so far remove control from the player.

There isnt a strict rule that tells developers everything needs to bee 100% realistic.

Also what I described doesnt necessarily need to be related to control schemes.

What I described is mostly related to interaction and environmental awareness, not how realistically your character responds to button inputs.

 

[Billy Idol]

Is it possible to offer an open world game (with open world gameplay) but additionally offer a dense and compact story. It somehow contradict itself imo...but I would love to experience this.

 

[orangpelupa]

video from Egoraptor address my concern about open world game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOC3vixnj_0#t=1270

basically i hate when i cant do what i want (hey im a superhero who cant pass this area because i have not done the FedEx quest). with more console power/storage, the game should be able to allows me what i want to do by having more content prepared either procedurally or manually.

its like in No Man's Sky interview, the player should be able to do what he/she want to do. And if there's a limitation, make the limitation dont feel like arbitrary limitation.

so i think... the game design paradigm itself need to change to properly harness the power that new console have. But will AAA publisher will allow this change to happen in their games... i don't know. Usually Sony and Nintendo and indie is willing to do things that dont always translate to money but MS play safe.

 

[Prophecy2k]

All I'd like to see this gen is more interesting elemental and environmental simulation. Things like a more realistic interaction with the gameworld opened up by the simulation of materials and material properties in game.

Things like, dry and flammable substances, that can be ignited and burn with simulated flame propagation that is also affected by things like wind speed and direction. Things like, metal surfaces and substances that correctly conduct electricity, or dry substances that can absorb water/liquids.

Things like chemical reactions, material phase transitions (i.e. melting, vaporising), can open up some amazing gameplay opportunities. And these are all things that could easily have been done last gen, as they need not be problems that you solve by just throwing a crop load of your processing budget at it. As long as you;re smart about it, I'm sure you can simulate these kinds of interactions in a fairly realistic way that actually greatly benefits gameplay.

 

[Sigfried1977]

video from Egoraptor address my concern about open world game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOC3vixnj_0#t=1270

His Sequelitis videos are so friggin' fantastic. Shame there's just four of them because the rest of his stuff is effin' terrible.

His Megaman X video highlights one thing I dearly miss in terms of gameplay (it has absolutely nothing to do with new hardware, though). Stop treating me like an idiot.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Is it possible to offer an open world game (with open world gameplay) but additionally offer a dense and compact story. It somehow contradict itself imo...but I would love to experience this.

I agree with this. Rockstar is getting better, but there are still too many filler missions. Red Dead Redemption had this long section in Mexico where the missions became a chore, but it had a great ending. GTA5 seemed to be more compact.

I like side-missions that are optional and can be completed after the story is complete. Give me a good 5-10 hour main story. Quality over quantity. THen give me some optional stuff I can plow through after if I still want to on top of just messing around in the sandbox

 

[homerdog]

The crazy thing about cloud compute is that it could do wonders for AI but it also beg the question of why are you connected to the internet to play against smart AI when you could actually be playing against real people?

Heh, maybe because of all the sexist, racist 13yo wankers?

 

[function]

AIs can be made to perform a certain task or act a certain way with the sole aim of improving the player's experience.

Other players - those bastards - often don't want to do this, and play for their own enjoyment instead of mine.

 

[blakjedi]

I want games to break the bonds of single developer experience. So crackdown shouldn't be made by ne studio but rather one studio who is the best at character models, turn 10 does vehicle models, 343 does enemy AI etc. Either a corporate project where all of MS' or Sony's best first parties each contribute their part to every title with certain studios being the lead...

A team that likes doing AI and NPC character interactions would be charged with creating thousands of characters for every first party world and as long as the universes are consistent they can crossover without being strange.

Hell even game world linking projects where you find that the Mass effect galaxy is still in the same universe as the Halo galaxy... And the Destiny galaxy... There's so.many way to play this... I just want consistently evolving worlds to take the place of of just DLC.

 

[Sigfried1977]

^Ubisoft kinda does this thing already (they have like a bazillion studios working on their games all over the world), and the results are increasingly soulless, toothless, directionless and overstuffed identikit monstrosities without edges and without anything remotely resembling a unique identity. Heck, they even had a racing game team (the Crew team?) work on WD's car handling, which also happens to be the one part about WD on which everyone agrees was pretty awful.

 

[L. Scofield]

Physics, physics, physics.

 

[onQ]

DualShock 4 has the potential to change console gameplay with the touchpad & the motion sensing.


Even without the camera the DualShock 4 motion sensing is about at the same level as the PlayStation move when the sphere isn't lit. This is a better control method than the directional pad in most cases & even better than the analog sticks in some cases.The touchpad is also better than the D-pad & analog sticks in a lot of cases so at some point devs should step out of the box & take full advantage of the DualShock 4.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Don't get your hopes up. Sixaxis wasn't used for anything notable on the whole. I doubt DS4 motion is going to amount to more than that.

 

[zed]

I think the 16x memory compared to last gen is the biggest changer.
OK ~4x this is prolly used on larger assests/res (plus OS extras) but you've still got 3x the memory. So the whole gameworld loaded at once, which improves imerssion

 

[dobwal]

Is it possible to offer an open world game (with open world gameplay) but additionally offer a dense and compact story. It somehow contradict itself imo...but I would love to experience this.

I am behind you on that point. What I haven't figured out is why not just build the open world setting and then reuse it with new stories for additional titles.

When playing GTA IV separate LC stories, I didn't feel any annoyance with the familiarity of the setting. In fact, quite the opposite. I liked the ability that I could confidently race through the city from start. Given that the characters unlike Niko aren't new to Liberty City, it was a plus in terms of immersion.

 

[trinibwoy]

Ridiculous results can be part of the fun! They gave us the mighty rocket jump!

Maybe but in most cases they're just called bugs.

Im a reasonable guy. Getting AI to resemble anything like human interaction is going to take a whole lot of compute and programming resources and won't happen anytime soon. Probably not even in my lifetime.

For now I'll be happy with a more physically accurate environment and proper character animation.