While searching and fixing game groups, something pop-ed up in my head. Game developers should really stop using the word game in their game titles. I think that's a bit obvious by now. It's like introducing a brand new car called the Toyota Car X300. Yeah, it's a car. Got it.

Anyway, I'm sure you nerds have advise of your own, so let's hear it. Other personal suggestions are:

1. Company Logo Skip. When you have to press ESC for more than three times just to cancel that company logo animation to get to the main menu, I think you're pushing it. Here's an idea, press ESC once so we can skip it all. Yes, you made it. Congratulations. Got it the first time around.

Oddly enough, no company logos on the main menu. Weird, you game developers.

2. Introduction Skip. I restart meine games at least 2-3 times before playing serious. Unlike those casual gamers who do in a single go *points fingers accusingly*, spending 5-20 minutes replaying the same intro video/tutorial is a bit annoying.

3. Slow Exit. When 'end program' is faster than exiting the game properly. You have programming issues.

4. Bad Exit. When escaping to desktop to save screenshots for MobyGames and the game goes weird when you re-enter the game, you have programming issues. Yes, latest Skyrim patch...I'm talking to you.

5. Slow Period. When ending a turn or entering a new loading area takes more than 30 seconds, you have programming issues and I have a really lousy computer. Yes, Civilization 5 I'm talking to you.

Among others.

Related to 3: "Exit game" means "exit game", not "exit to main menu"!

.1. Company Logo Skip. When you have to press ESC for more than three times just to cancel that company logo animation to get to the main menu, I think you're pushing it. Here's an idea, press ESC once so we can skip it all. Yes, you made. Congratulations. Got it the first time around.

Oddly enough, no company logos on the main menu. Weird, you game developers.

2. Introduction Skip. I restart meine games at least 2-3 times before playing serious. Unlike those casual gamers who do in a single go *points fingers accusingly*, spending 5-20 minutes replaying the same intro video/tutorial is a bit annoyingBack in a previous life, I helped assemble a demoscene music disk. I came up with what I wanted to see, and then communicated this to our programmer, who returned my order with a note "pick 2 -- blisteringly fast, graphically intensive in realtime, works on old systems." I wanted to open playing an intense, aggressive techno track and go straight to a start menu that was all fireworks, but when he submitted a beta of the disk instead it opened with a leisurely, atmospheric track that played through for almost all of its four minutes or so before going to the main menu. I was baffled. Here he revealed the programmer's trick to me: that sometimes the filler at the start of a program is a smokescreen thrown in the user's face to conceal the fact that the program needs a lot of time to configure, optimise and generally set itself up in the background.

5. Slow Period. When ending a turn or entering a new loading area takes more than 30 seconds, you have programming issues and I have a really lousy computer. Yes, Civilization 5 I'm talking to you.

I recall back on my 386 toward the end of Sword of Aragon I would arrange to take my turn and then go to dinner with my parents while my turn played itself out. I think the longest interval between me giving the game player input was something like an hour and a half.

I also remember once watching a missed shot in Xcom 1 continue traveling through the game map for 5 minutes before reaching the edge of the map.

But that was a 386. I have no idea what the excuses are today.

Indie developers: you aren't some huge heartless corporation, your games are the labor of love of single individuals who care about their creation? Instead of wasting time with trolls on some forum, why don't you enter your damned games to MobyGames yourself? It's free promotion, you can even sneak in your website's URL and write own portfolio! (Wikipedia won't let you do that, isn't MobyGames a wonderful ego booster?) If you already have a brief description of your game penned, it would only take you minutes. In the long run, this may be even more effective (our categorization etc.) than babbling on some damned Facebook, Reddit or whatever is the latest fad. We have enough work here adding those 10000 missing 30-year-old 8-bit games, thank you (you may now lower your hands).

Amen

They'd be happy to feed us their ad blurb as the game's description, but are unable to frame their game objectively. In any case, it's less effort just to paste their press release into our forums.

Save anywhere. If I have displayed outstanding skills and got incredibly lucky jumping over five bottomless pits, but got impaled on rusty spikes in the sixth, I do not want to repeat the first five ever again in my life. Forcing me to overcome again an obstacle I have already overcome is arrogant idiocy and the number one plague of video game design.

What if the obstacle is intended to be a series of obstacles?

If it has to rely on the absence of saves, it is a badly designed series of obstacles. In my whole life I have never played a game without save-anywhere which would have been worse with it. I also have never played a game with save-anywhere which would have been better without.

I recall games with save-anywhere design which could disable saving temporarily/in certain regions/before events (to avoid saving while you're falling into an abyss etc.).

I'm not immortal nor crazy enough to re-try that jump over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again!

No, it doesn't have to rely on the absence of saves. But mind you, there are certain types of games that are better without the ability to save every time. And no, don't come to me with "but give other people an option". Like everything else, it's a deliberate choice on part of the game designer, and as long as other sections of the game are thought out in a neat way, this won't be an issue. If a game features a string of challenges that are meant to be executed in an elegant fashion without saving, then it is in no way a badly designed challenge. Unless this string of challenges would amount to 2 hours. I'm not against saving all the time, I'm just saying that in my opinion it is a feature that doesn't necessitate bashing a game to the ground. Half-Life has saving everywhere and yet, the last levels are one of the most retarded platforming sections I've ever had the displeasure to experience. Yes, I wouldn't even bother if it didn't have saving everywhere, but that is not a feature that is able to fool me into thinking "geez, this platforming ain't so bad after all". I seriously would rather play hard as nails platformer that maybe doesn't have saving everywhere, only after the completion of a level, as long as the controls and tools given to me as a player are all-around tight. Of course, different strokes for different folks so I guess this won't go anywhere but hey...might as well add my input.

In my experience the one reason why games include no saving is because they want to artificially prolong the playing time. The same reason why many adventure games feel the need to include awful maze sections. I enough money to buy all the games I want and what I lack is time (OK, the time I sink into MobyGames doesn't help) so I don't have the need to simply kill time. Challenge me with challenges, don't challenge me with repetition.

Maybe those games you describe exist. I did not encounter them yet. However, I need to admit that I would not voluntarily touch the most likely contenders anyway even if I could save anywhere. (Super Meat Boy or whatever)
I also usually don't save "during the action", only when designers like the ones who made the sniper level in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault design the level so you have to save-scum. But that is the direct opposite of bad level design. Probably even wose.

Xen is horrible. The stealth section in Return to Castle Wolfenstein is horrible. Bad games/sections don't get better with saving-anywhere. But they probably get worse without. Hell, my third-favorite game of all time has restricted saving (Baldur's Gate II) so this is certainly not my only point to decide if a game is good or not.

RPGs is so not your genre. :p

Maybe those games you describe exist. I did not encounter them yet.

Me neither. Recently I could finally discover older console platform classics because I played them on emulators. Saving right after performing a tricky jump is so unbelievably more satisfying than wasting hours of your life doing the same segment over and over again.

It might be the age. I recall the 20-year-old me patiently doing just what I described above as unsatisfying. I had access to only a handful of games back then and there were no emulators. Now when I'm nearing 40 I don't have time for this. And yet my gaming life is much more satisfying today than it was then.

Well, there's a mostly-PC genre traditionally without save-anywhere. Flight simulators.

Actually, that could probably apply to "mission-based" games in general, not only flight simulations. IIRC, Advanced Destroyer Simulator does not allow saving. SWAT 2 neither. Same thing with Desert Strike (not really a simulation).

Cannon Fodder 1 & 2, Syndicate and Syndicate Wars would probably be boring games if you could save at any time.

Off the top of my head, quicksaving/saving anywhere would completely ruin Dark Souls, and it removes quite a large portion of what makes XCOM as great as it is --you can try it yourself, because the option is actually there, and it does become a lesser game if you start saving during the course of a mission.

Gonna have to say I agree with pretty much everything you've said here. My tastes tend toward console action games rather than PC games, but I personally view save-anywhere as a crutch for weak design and balancing, rather than a positive feature. If I'm playing a game, I want to get through it by my own skill, not by save-scumming to incrementally brute force my way through whatever challenge. If the game is imbalanced, and subsequently designed around being able to save scum, I consider that one of the worst sins a designer can make. This is why I cannot stand the Elder Scrolls games I've played (Morrowind and Oblivion) -- the only way I ever felt like I could make tangible progress was if I quicksaved every ten feet, and at that point it felt less like role playing and more like keeping my fingers on my last four choices in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book.

Besides, the ability to quicksave and reload any time for any reason completely decimates any sense of tension that a game might be trying to create. How can I get engrossed in a challenge when there's absolutely no punishment for failing it?

This is why I cannot stand the Elder Scrolls games I've played (Morrowind and Oblivion) -- the only way I ever felt like I could make tangible progress was if I quicksaved every ten feet

Seriously? You must have played them on the hardest difficulty setting then. Why didn't you just select an easier one?

Anyway, I understand you guys like this kind of challenge, but what I don't understand is why you advocate a system that imposes it on the player. It is equivalent to insisting there should be no "easy" or "normal" difficulty levels at all because you want to play everything on "hard". All I'm asking for is the possibility to save anywhere. Whether I decide to "save scum" or not should be then my own decision. You prefer to go through a whole platforming stage without saving? Good for you! But please allow others to have a choice whether they want to do it or not :)

All that regardless of the historical fact that lack of save feature was initially a technology-bound limitation. There were PC platformers with save-anywhere feature as early as the 80s, and others would have followed their example if not for the dubious "tradition".

The only challenge I don't use in games is the ironman challenge that doesn't allow save games throughout the game. I regret to inform that even I'm not that hardcore. Saving games is the only way I can control the narrative of the game in a way that I like it.

On a designer's note, I feel that giving the player options to do stuff with their gameplay rules is much more appreciated than limiting it for the sake of a particular challenge style offered by game developers, that may not necessarily be shared by the gamers.

Yeah, I hate Resident Evil due to its limited save features. Bite me. :p

It's not that I found the game difficult, it's that in a dungeon I simply could not tell if the next room would be pathetically easy or a complete deathtrap. The chance was slim, but I felt like since the option was there, I HAD to save after every successful encounter, and to load if i made too many mistakes and took too much damage. Then again, there are myriad other reasons I dislike those games. I'm sure trying to play an argonian thief on my first playthrough didn't help. ;)

Nevertheless, I will admit that it is entirely a question of game balance and design (and personal taste, obviously). The only way I was able to complete Phantasy Star II was thanks to the savestate option in the Xbox 360 port. On the other hand, Dark Souls would not be nearly the amazing experience it is without it's incredibly unforgiving save system.

I would absolutely say that adding a quicksave system to a game that doesn't really need it (or at least isn't specifically designed with one in mind) can ruin my experience. Perhaps it's a matter of self-control, but I feel like if the option is given, it's there for a reason, and I should use it. Just KNOWING I could save and reload with no penalty will kill the tension for me, even if I tiptoe around it. If you think a game would be frustrating and unplayable without being able to save after every jump, that sounds like a failing of game design, and quicksaving would be nothing more than a band-aid over a larger problem.

EDIT: You know, I could swear we've had this exact same discussion before.

In your defense, that is somewhat true. Elder scrolls has trouble not really in the balancing department, but in how the player can reasonably identify if an enemy is really badass or not. Still playing Skyrim, I'm more confident fighting a dragon than a mage. I suppose some gamers like this type of unpredictability. I'm not inclined either way, since saving often has always been a part of my style of gameplay.

Same goes for Fallout. I'm currently Playing New Vegas. Even though I put absolutely no skill points in combat skills I can kill most human and canine enemies in one shot with a pistol or plasma gun (assuming I hit) but I walked into a huge scorpion right next to the starting area and emptied a full clip on him at point blank range and he lost less than 10% of his health.

Not being able to save anywhere generally is a dealbreaker for me. Played very few games where it wasn't a possibility, and those usually because I wasn't aware of it when I started and I still found them all right even so, despite being frustrated throughout by this problem.

But different perspectives here, I play strictly on PC and go for thinking/planning/building, not action/reflexes. Generally play for immersion and escapism, and to toy around with some systems (usually of character development) if I find anything interesting, not to be challenged and frustrated. There's quite enough of that in real life, thank you very much.

As for Elder Scrolls games, heh, bought Morrowind only in 2007, played it for a stint in 2008 and then continued for a bit more last year, what got me was the mix of respawns and limited merchant gold. Having to go around half the world to sell the stuff you picked up from one area (and be largely unable to actually sell the pricier things at all, if you want full price) and encountering the same damn things every single time while doing it quickly loses its appeal.
Never had issues with its difficulty though. Made a healing belt right away, upgraded a bit later, and with very good armor and maxed armor skill (by leaving character to be whacked repeatedly by a few weak foes, occasionally using belt to heal as needed) it's fine. If those respawns would have meant so many actual risks too, I'd have given up even sooner.
Still no real interest in Oblivion though, due to the level scaling. Use mod to get rid of it, of course, but if the game was made with that scaling in mind, meh. As for Skyrim, new computer needed first, then... maybe someday.

That said, adding to the list: Respawns and random battles suck.

I don't mind checkpoint systems so much as long as they are placed after each cutscene and just before and after each challenging section (and such a section isn't longer than 5 minutes).

Most annoying is games where you're forced to watch through a cutscene more than once. I'm heavily against cutscenes anyway, so seeing a cutscene once is already pushing it.

Second most annoying is having a difficult section, but keep having to do over the 2 minute walk to it, then fail and having to walk for 2 minutes again. Games like TrackMania, Super Meat Boy, VVVVVV, etc. have shown that having punishingly difficult sections can be fun, as long as you can retry with the single press of a button and absolutely no delays. And that includes camera pans, fade ins and outs, cutscenes (also if you can skip them, they're still annoying because you have to click an extra time). I just want to instantly try again, not watch the camera pan show the entire level again even though I've played (and failed) it 20 times already (I'm talking to you Bastion!).

And after a challenge should be obvious, but it wouldn't be the first time that I finally made some difficult section and then make some dumb mistake in the 5 minutes after it only to find out there hadn't been a checkpoint yet. It can work sometimes, to create some sort of pressure on the player, but rarely and definitely not on story games, as it's very meta-gameplay to create excitement through save-limitations, rather than plot devices.

Nice to know that limited saving capabilities frowned up by gamers.

In regards to respawns and random battles. I guess it would be depend on the purpose of the battle. For the sake of fighting itself, yes. Combat action in Skyrim is terribly boring for a somewhat action oriented RPG. Still consider Fallout 1&2, and Jagged Alliance to be the most addictive *just fighting random dudes for fun's sake*. Latest game that got my interested in combat again was Mount&Blade.

Actually, I'll give respect to any developer that can make retarded levels of repetitive actions fun. For the most part effective in many JRPGS...not so much in western games. Usually because there's something to look forward to when defeating an enemy. Something lacking in Skyrim and Fallout 3...partially I blame due to stale amounts of item choices and too fast too easy leveling up requirements. I think.

I've read everything you guys said about save-anywhere vs. quicksaving and I don't know, both sides have their good and bad aspects, but I guess I get more frustrated with games without save-anywhere features. Two examples that come to my mind right now are Hitman (the first one) and Diablo 3.

I tried playing Hitman and I enjoyed the concept, the fact that you could do the mission in various ways and stuff, but not being able to save the game during a mission was quite frustrating, to the point that I stopped playing it for probably more than a year now. I've quit playing during one mission in South America where you have to kill the drug lord and then you have to destroy their drug lab and escape (I guess by using an helicopter, I don't remember exactly now). Well, there are lots and lots of enemies in that mission, and Hitman is no Rambo, so you can't just go killing them without trying to be furtive. The problem is that I keep dying at the middle of the mission, and having to repeat the first part every time is reeeeally annoying, because I know I can beat all that easily, most of it consists in just walking long distances. So, I think that if I'm forced to go through easier and more boring parts of a mission just to die in the middle of it, the game designers are to blame.

As for Diablo 3, the reason why I miss saving anywhere has nothing to do with dying or challenges, as the game lets the player respawn with almost no penalty. The real problem is that some portions of the game take you a certain amount of time to play, and we all know that time is a scarce commodity for an adult. If I want to play just 5 minutes of it and then leave to work, I can't because if I stop playing during a mission, the map will be a new one next time, with new dungeons and new enemies to kill. So if you like to explore, you better have time to explore all you can in one sit, or else you'll never get past some parts.

Of course, abusing a save-anywhere feature is something that really spoils the challenge (and the fun) of a game, but if I turn to save-scumm, it can be that the designers just didn't their job well. Of course, you could blame me for not being up to the challenge, but I think that games should be designed with the player in mind.

Speaking of necessary save scumming, back to poking through Divinity 2 now and... mindreading is probably the best example of where that's necessary. Why did they decide to make that cost experience, I have no clue, but it's obviously not worth it to try to mindread everyone just in hopes it'll be useful, so you save before a dialog, mindread, then reload if you just got an useless line, and if it was an useful one you go on that lead and see if the reward is worth the trouble, and if not reload again...

Diablo... don't get me started. Played D2 at some point and just about loathed it, and the resetting areas were a fair part of the reason why (of course, the lack of any story worth mentioning, any interesting events, meaningful towns or NPC interaction and so on made up the rest). I kept timing starting to play so I'll have the best chance to finish an area and get to the next jump to be able to skip redoing it, and once when I couldn't and really wasn't about to do that again I left the game running through the night to continue when I woke up. Really NOT what you want to do.

What about penalty-free but offering bragging rights for those who want a challenge if you don't make use of much saving? Blade of Darkness comes to mind here, could save anywhere (in theory, in practice if you saved next to a trap the game broke due to a bug... which breaking could take any form, including making yourself permanently invulnerable to all attacks), but you got a title according to the average number of saves per level. These days, when achievements are so common, those could be used.

I don't agree with Divinity 2. Save scumming is not necessary. In the long run the bit of experience you lose by reading everyone's mind does not matter. Especially because the "useless" (debatable, at least in the German version they are funny) are usually the ones which cost almost no experience anyway. As far as I remember, after the first city almost every mind reading has some in-game advantage.

I like this. If a game gives the option to save, but recognizes it when I don't and gives me a little bonus or achievement, that's a good incentive for me to challenge myself to play without the saves.

If you want me to care about a character's tragic death, let him appear more than twice before. Even better, let him speak more than two lines overall! The reaction "Who was that? Oh that other character moans so I guess he was important." is probably not the reaction you are shooting for. Yes, I'm looking at you, Splinter Cell. You make the storytelling in Postal III seem coherent and well thought out.

Lose the jump button. Sure there is an entire genre that is based around jumping, but really, about 98% of the games out there with a jump button barely even use it, and A LOT of the ones that do use it, are actually a little worse for that very reason (Alan Wake, I'm looking at you). Conversely, games that dropped the jump button always replace it with much more interesting and useful functionalities (The Witcher 2, the Arkham games, Mass Effect, Dark Souls).

And of course, for the millionth time, stop catering to the lowest common denominator and bring back some fucking challenge. The aforementioned Dark Souls made quite clear how starving we all are for this, as did the reception to XCOM's Ironman Mode.

Erm, no. Being unable to jump is just... stupid, makes no sense. It's also an important part of exploration (through preferably with added climbing moves, not turning a 3d environment into a platformer with questionable advantages for struggling to make it past one block or another, if I'm jumping somewhere let the character grab on, pull up, hold on to avoid falling...), a way to avoid traps, may well be a combat element (jump attacks, jump to dodge)... and depending on how the animation is done, may just speed up running around the game world to some extent too.

You can jump in Dark Souls, it just doesn't have a dedicated button.

I think it's important to consider how jumping fits into the the game's overall design. In something like Mario where vertical movement is important, hell yes you need a dedicated jump button. But in Zelda, where any vertical movement is done through climbing (or falling), it's far less important, which is why it's perfectly fine to be part of a context-based system there.

Precisely my point. I opened saying "there is an entire genre that is based around jumping" --of course you can't remove it in those.

But, re-taking the Dark Souls example, in that game jumping is not a core mechanic, it's just something you can do to reach certain places you don't actually need to reach, and you can play through the entire game without jumping once. As you just said, it's even integrated as a secondary function. This is what I'd call a good implementation, because it doesn't get in the way. Hell, the Arkham games are all about vertical exploration, and yet look at how jumping is done in them.

The implementation in games like Fallout 3 / New Vegas or Alan Wake, on the other hand, results in a waste of valuable buttons to perform a largely useless function. In the latter it's especially bad on account of a combination of awkward physics and mandatory platforming. In games like these, a jump button doesn't do any good, and they may actually be better losing it altogether. In fact, the Fallouts need a sprint button *much* more. In any case, maybe one with a contextual "climb" functionality.

I think you could easily expand this to "don't give any secondary or tertiary function its own dedicated button." If I'm not using it ALL THE TIME and need it on a moment's notice, it probably doesn't need to be front and center. Another example would be the "good work!" button in Resident Evil 6.

I guess another one would be "cut out your half-baked or purposeless features." :P

That's the curse of modern 12-button joysticks... once you have 12 buttons, you have to figure out 12 things to do with them.

Exactly. I wish someone would have said something like this to John Carmack back when he was still relevant and able to do so much damage. We probably wouldn't have suffered so many first person jumping puzzles, for one thing. It would be such a beautiful world...

In other words, it's a problem caused by the limitations of console controls, not by the games themselves. Play on a PC and you'll have 100 or so buttons to play with :p

I remember playing Sands of Time on PC with a keyboard and thinking "YES! Finally a game that understands". Having a complex 3D game that just uses 3 or so action buttons instead of half the frickin' keyboard.

Walking is already boring in games, especially if you go through the same places a gazillion of times. Removing jumping would make it worse. It would be better to just put it on autopilot while I enjoy the scenery. At least until the next fight or smth.

No way! On the contrary, let me jump in every game! Why the hell not? Useful or useless, jumping makes everything more fun.

Recently I tried playing Hitman 2 and I was really put off by the lack of jumping.

Because you start like that, as something you can just do for kicks, because "why not?"; and then every developer and their dog starts using it as a crutch whenever they run out of ideas, and then jumping becomes the gameplay version of the crate; and next thing you know, you have mandatory jumping over bottomless chasms/pointy spikes/flaming lava in every first person game, where your character doesn't even have any goddamned feet.

It's exactly this sort of thinking that leads to terrible feature bloat.

"Oh, every other game lets you jump, so we'll add jumping!"
"We need to justify our jump feature, so let's add a platforming section!"
"Our playtesters are having trouble with the platforming section, let's add a mandatory tutorial before it so nobody gets confused!"

As opposed to, you know, simply cutting the jump feature that doesn't fit with the style of the game anyway...

Story: In Witcher you cannot jump, and there is a small bridge and a big dog blocking it. It won't budge because it doesn't want to. Furthermore you can't kill it because it's daylight city and you can't draw your sword out. Fin.

Exactly. This is the kind of design that always bothered me in Witcher games or BioWare RPGs - they are becoming increasingly "japanized", with low interactivity and artificial borders. Luckily Elder Scrolls games always stay true to their "do whatever you want" formula.

I think that may be more a symptom of ever-increasing development costs on modern hardware. When you spend so many man-hours and so much money on making these elaborately detailed worlds, there's no resources left to populate them with anything interesting to do. Elder Scrolls on the other hand takes the other extreme, seeming to rely heavily on procedurally-generated environments and reused assets, but what's the point in being able to collect the whole world's cabbage in your basement when every basement in the game looks alike anyway?

but what's the point in being able to collect the whole world's cabbage in your basement when every basement in the game looks alike anyway?

Not necessarily - even Morrowind already started having different kinds of basements. In Skyrim they can be considered unique.

Besides, that's not the point. It's the knowledge that you can theoretically collect the whole world's cabbage that makes it so exhilarating.

Amen.

Give me a meaningful goal (or several) and story, some characters I can care for, some interesting events here and there, decent controls and a believable world as my playground. How and when I get around said world, past the goals I set myself and to the one(s) set by the game should be my call.
... Just... make it count when I do something in said world, mkay?

Reminds me of Ultima 6 and 7. Practically moved everything that could be moved in the game world to Lord British's palace in Ultima 6 or that teleporter dimension in Ultima 7.

*likes to hoard shiny things*

Time for an Elder Scrolls x Wiz'n'Liz crossover then, because there is no point collecting cabbage if you are not planning to mix it with some other fruit/vegetable: http://www.mobygames.com/game/wiz-n-liz/hints/hintId,7594/

I agree with you on this one. While it didn't bother me in Hitman 2, I often find it quite annoying when the jumps are context-specific. It just makes it feel so hand-holdy. Jumping is cool! Also, while this shouldn't occur in the game to begin with, there has been plenty of times where I've gotten stuck somewhere and jumping has helped.

...and speaking of losing certain features that doesn't support gameplay:

Get rid of sitting down on chairs and taking a pee when it serves no purpose in-game. And yes, boys. I said sit down on the dinner table and pee. I type too fast. :p

One other annoyance I found in Elder Scroll games is replenishing items. When I loot a house I expect it to remain looted, gawddangit!

One other annoyance I found in Elder Scroll games is replenishing items. When I loot a house I expect it to remain looted, gawddangit!

Totally agree with this. That kind of design ruins the whole purpose of collecting.

The engine is already overchallenged (some people on consoles literally can't play the game anymore after a eighty hours of so). Boy, I don't want to see how it performs if it has to remember every spoon I stole.

Probably as far as lootings are concerned, I prefer Fallout 3. Items don't replenish, and there isn't a wide range of useless items scattered either. Makes my OCD habit of collecting 800 tin cans much more pleasurable. :p

This goes with the respawns, and overall with making player actions actually have real effects. So yep, it should remember every spoon you stole.

Pause. The internationally recognized key to press when suddenly your stomach is invaded by aliens and have to make a flying leap to the nearest lagoon, is ESC.

ESC. Not p, not space bar, not F1, not any other key the developers want to force the player to follow and often cannot change. Other worthy mentions, thanks to Sierra, save or quick save is F5, load is F7.

No way. I'll configure my own quicksave/load keys thank you very much.

I usually bind them to numpad+ and numpad/ I think maybe Deus Ex had that by default? Or perhaps it's just the first game where I used those bindings.

Blasphemy! Die infidel!!!

Must be part of the control S/control L crowd. Traitors. :p

What's a no-no is being unable to change keys. Should be fully configurable. Somewhat oddly, my default mappings have a lot to do with how I played the first Gothic (and what I could figure out of a better configuration in my attempts with the 2nd). That was hard enough to get a decent control on to force me to come up with something that really worked for me and it got quite hardwired since.

And Esc is menu (not F10 or F12 or whatever, Esc!). For a pause that lets you keep looking at the game screen, and particularly for active pause where you can assign commands, that definitely needs another key, and it must be easy to reach with fingers on WASD, so I go with space. Jump is Alt, obviously left one if it makes a difference... Games that have jumping but don't allow Alt to be mapped to an action on its own cause quite a headache. Ctrl crouch or sneak (if both are available, problem), Shift temporary switch between walking and running (always run on if an option, Caps Lock switch to walk until pressed again, if function available), Tab often inventory, left click default attack (except in Gothic (2 now), where it's left attack, right is right, middle is main/forward), right click secondary frequently used combat function (magic, defend, whatever the case may be), middle click default non-combat action if mapped separately, buttons 4 and 5 (back and forward on mouse) usually switch between combat and non-combat mode and target lock (or switch lock) if applicable... Depends on game, but that'd be the general idea.

Alt? That's one key I never ever use. If an important key is assigned to Alt, I move it to another key. My default has always been:

Pause/Menu: ESC.
Help/Encyclopedia: F1.
Movement: A,S,W,D. Can't believe I've played games where movement included q,e,z.
Run/Walk: Left Shift.
Crouch/Sneak: Left Ctrl.
Jump: Space bar
Use: E.
Reload/Ready weapon: R
Quests: Tab
Inventory: I
Save: Shift S.
Load: Shift L
Quick Save: F5
Quick Load F7 or F9.
Hand gun or medieval main melee weapon: 1
Shotgun/Semi Automatic or medieval ranged weapon: 2
Assault rifle or main attack spell: 3

Pause/Menu: ESC. (In real-time with pause games like Baldur's Gate: Space Bar)
Movement: Arrow keys (naturally)
Run/Walk: Right Shift.
Crouch/Sneak: Right Ctrl.
Jump: Numpad 0
Use: End
Reload/Ready weapon: Page Down
Quests: Tab, Q
Inventory: Enter
Quick Save: Numpad +
Quick Load: Numpad /
Change weapons: Scroll wheel
Insta-heal: Backspace
Special ability 1: Delete
Special ability 2: Numpad 1
Attack: Left mouse button
Aim down sight: Right mouse button
Insta-Melee/grenade: Middle Mouse button (whichever is more useful in the game)

Yeah, whoever came up with WASD combo is genius. I use it exclusively for movement in games, since it allows me to have Q and E for strafing as well.

I dunno about you guys, but I usually use the Start button to pause. :D

I always use the middle mouse button and jump and use the thumb button for a often used support skill, e.g. entering cover in action games. I set the grenade key away wide away from the buttons I usually press because the only thing I do with it is blowing myself up. I also often use numpad+ and / for quicksave and quickload.

I used to have a corner desk and used the arrow keys for my whole PC gaming life. A few months ago I bought myself a new, smaller desk and adapted to the usual WASD setup. The migration went much better as feared but I'm still getting used to it.

A few more nitpicks:

Disappearing corpses. Is it me, or is someone else here also annoyed by the fact many modern 3D games let corpses magically evaporate after a while? Come on. I remember games from mid-nineties where this didn't happen! When I kill people I want to be able to submit some proof in case I suddenly decide to repent.

Bitmap clouds. Been playing Far Cry 3 recently and while I like the game I absolutely cannot stand those fake skies. Dude... Ultima IX had real 3D skies with moving clouds! What gives?

That's a lot of resource waste. Five hundred bodies scattered every where isn't exactly resource efficient. Gradually composing bodies (not exactly resource efficient either, mind you), however, make more sense.

Personally, I'd like to play an RPG where my shopping habits effect the global economy. That I can personally bankrupt a town or make it more prosperous. Only game that had that feature embedded in a minor way were the older versions of Sid Meier's Pirates!

Which modern FPS gives you 500 corpses in one place, maybe except Serious Sam?

We know it's a trick to save on the # of polys on screen to render, but these corpses could use Level of Detail trick = less detailed (less polys/low-res textures) models.

Corpses are like bread crumbs :) "Oh, looks like I already visited this room, everybody is dead here."

Besides most FPSes are linear corridor shooters, where you won't be in the same room for more than 2 minutes and will never visit it again afterwards. For sandbox games it makes more sense to 'garbage collect' corpses of course.

Ah, so much fun to collect all knocked out enemies in the same corner in Thief games.

I remember piling up bodies the first time I played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Not entirely sure why I did that, but admittedly I was somewhat drawn to build a huge stack, set it on fire, and worship radiated Russian gods. :p

I'm a bit dissapointed that you have not proposed a pile-able bodies game group yet... IIRC NOLF2 could also be part of it.

If there's an exact technical title, sure. Like hunger daemons, ragdoll mechanics, etc. Problem with pile-able bodies, it's actually referring to a feature where you can move objects in a 3D environment, not specifically reserved for body piling. So, I'm not sure what that's called.

Wanted to make a game group for that bouncing boobie thing, but I keep forgetting the proper term for it. Boobie kept diverting my focus. :p

Jiggling breasts physics

You have the consoles to thank for that one. As well as small levels broken by loading screens (surely you noticed the difference between navigating Liberty Island in the first Deus Ex and Invisible War, or the ridiculously tiny levels in Thief 3 with those perplexing mist gates --that's the Xbox for you). Anything that helps saving resources, what with those ridiculous hard drives they have and such.

And, against all expectations and promises, those kinds of issues carried over to the current generation too. Look at the levels in Dishonored. *That* is considered "large" these days. A fucking door in the middle of a city, for fuck's sake.