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.
Internet Connection - On/Off
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 ☺️
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.
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.”
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
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.
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.
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…)
Allow me to turn off the stupid pre-launch splash titles.
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.
Pause and save during cutscenes.
- Description of the effects and hardware demands of graphics options.
- An actual benchmark for ‘optimized settings’ (even if it’s just crunching numbers) instead of hardcoded GPU names.
- Clear indication of which difficulty the game was balanced for.
- Msaa. Hate running old games at 200 fps with jagged edges and blur thanks to fxaa.
- Instant controls switching between controller and keyboard. Tired of games that pick input type at startup, pick input glyphs at startup, ignore first button press from a different input before switching, disable controller if keyboard input is detected etc etc. Edit: exciting new addition courtesy of arkham origins: detecting steam input as a keyboard
- Not games but steam: just let me force steam input on all games like Proton.
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
Save&quit at any time
So I can just boot up the game, play for 15 minutes and go do other stuff
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.
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.
Gameplay settings menus that allow you to turn off gameplay mechanisms you simply don’t enjoy, or tune them.
I’m talking about ones that are like one line of code being set to true instead of false etc. That type of thing.
Basically things like that and the Atomfall gameplay/difficulty settings menu
I don’t give a fuck if some pretentious asses “artistic vision” requires the player to backtrack half way across a level on every death or thinks a shitty minigame should be played no less than 153 times every play through. I want to be able to just turn off the unfun shit, and leave on the fun shit.
This is a game. I don’t care if the developer thinks X Y or Z adds to the experience. If I don’t, within reason I should just be able to turn it off.
I disagree because it solely approaches games as some sort of “electronic commodity” and outright despises a development group’s artistry.
Sure, not every game is trying to be art. But games have long gone beyond the realm of simply “entertain me”. That opinion is like saying “books should be made in a way that allows users to change the story whenever and however they want.” It is something you can do but there’s no imperative to cater to it.
I disagree because it solely approaches games as some sort of “electronic commodity” and outright despises a development group’s artistry.
This is meaningless pretentious gibberish. It’s like saying that watching movie on an unintended device is disrespecting the playwright.
Why should your desire to put entertaining past times on a pedestal restrict what I should be able to do.
If you feel that way, then play games as they intend. There is no reason to be against other people having an option just because you don’t like it.
You are in essence gatekeeping enjoying a video game as a concept. Like people must enjoy them the way you envision.
That opinion is like saying “books should be made in a way that allows users to change the story whenever and however they want.” It is something you can do but there’s no imperative to cater to it.
This makes no sense at all as an analogy. Books don’t run on game engines and don’t have recycled bits of logic that game mechanics are comprised of that can be mass changed to great effect. The feature you’re describing would require the equivalent of writing the book a million times over. The changes Im describing are often accomplished on day one by modders, or just included by the developers as a quality of life feature set.
You are in essence gatekeeping enjoying a video game as a concept. Like people must enjoy them the way you envision.
What an incredibly inaccurate statement. I love modding video games, I spend more time modding video games than I spend playing video games. I understand that the vision developers have doesn’t often align with what I want from their product.
I don’t agree that developers should be spending dev cycles making a game functional for a user that turns off any configuration of gameplay mechanics.
Saying you can just set a variable from “
truetofalse” is so laughably misunderstanding what goes into software development much less game development that it sounds entitled. What gameplay mechanics are you even saying should be configurable? All of them? Just turn off the combat in a fighting game? At what point is a gameplay mechanic integral to the genre/experience? And who is the person or persons that decide?Developers should be free to create what they want, and the end user is free to mod it however they want. That includes, for the devs, not purposefully obfuscating things so that modding is more diffcult.
Saying you can just set a variable from “true to false” is so laughably misunderstanding what goes into software development much less game development that it sounds entitled.
This is an attempt to sound smart that falls flat. The idea that there are no configuration settings that are simply inaccessible to users which are boolean values is laughably naive and provably wrong in many games.
What gameplay mechanics are you even saying should be configurable? All of them? Just turn off the combat in a fighting game? At what point is a gameplay mechanic integral to the genre/experience? And who is the person or persons that decide?
This isn’t an argument, its you saying that without being hyper specific, and laying out a detailed rule book for hypothetical future games, youll arbitrarily decide to assume the most irrational conclusion so that you can continue to rage and gate keep.
Developers should be free to create what they want, and the end user is free to mod it however they want. That includes, for the devs, not purposefully obfuscating things so that modding is more diffcult.
This is a strawman argument, as no one in this thread is restricting any developers ability to do anything. It is quite literally a wishlist thread. This “criticism” could literally be applied to anything in this thread. Its invalid.
I was with you at first, thinking you meant in a sandbox game, like turning off hunger/on hardcore in Minecraft, etc. but you’re just whining because every moment isn’t custom built to keep up with your personal ADHD/hedonic treadmill. The point of a game isn’t to just give you a blowjob from launch to credits. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re looking in the wrong place.
but you’re just whining because every moment isn’t custom built to keep up with your personal ADHD/hedonic treadmill.
This is such a weirdly hostile, assumptive and gatekeepy sentiment.
The point of a game isn’t to just give you a blowjob from launch to credits. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re looking in the wrong place.
Your mentality of “this is not what the point of a game is” is especially ridiculous because if a game was that, what I’m advocating for would give you the ability to make it what you want instead.
You really like the word ‘gatekeep,’ as though it were a bad thing. When you walk into a museum, start complaining about the lack of teleporters and strippers, and then get told to leave, yeah, they’re gatekeeping you, but it’s because you’re complaining about the lack of teleporters and strippers in a museum. That’s not what it’s there for. They have curated a collection of experiences focused on creating an overarching experience, and you have wandered in, said ‘I don’t want to have to walk to each exhibit, teleport me,’ and ‘This exhibit is booooooring. Teleport me to the one with strippers.’ If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re looking in the wrong place.
This is such a ridiculously bad faith analogy I feel like it has to be on purpose
It’s actually one of the cleanest, most direct analogies I’ve ever used. Both are curated experiences with controlled visual, auditory, and interactive elements. The differences lie only in the physical/resource limitations each has for the kinds of experiences they can include.
The differences lie only in the physical/resource limitations each has for the kinds of experiences they can include.
Not only is this wrong, but it’s also nonsensical. It is nonsensical because these are massive elements of each experience and why accommodating preferences in one is far easier than the other. Its also wrong because most museum experiences with interaction absolutely have the option to skip parts of said interactions.
The other reason this is wrong, is that these are certainly not the only areas differences lie in, as museums aim to preserve history, and are therefore locked in content wise from that perspective, what with the physical artifacts and care for that. Games are not at all that.
The whole analogy is terrible.
accommodating preferences in one is far easier than the other.
Tell me you’ve never tried to code a complex interactive experience without telling me you’ve never tried to code a complex interactive experience. If you think it’s so easy to take every element of a highly complex, performance sensitive program and make it possible to pick and choose which ones you experience without breaking the whole experience or turning a 1 year project into a 10 year project, go ahead and try. Do you also ask movie directors to make their movies so that when you hit ‘skip scene’ because you don’t like the way the scene looks, it still makes a good movie?
museums aim to preserve history
That’s just your failure to understand there are more kinds of museum than a history museum. A history museum does have special work involved, but others don’t share that element. Perhaps you’ve heard of an art museum, sometimes also known as a gallery. They can contain all sorts of elements, audio, video, scent, touch, taste, human interaction, machine interaction, ludic interaction, whatever. The artifacts can be any age, with art from hundreds of years ago or being created in the moment via performance.
The analogy is a failure, to be sure, but only because I hadn’t considered the possibility you wouldn’t have that piece of common knowledge. Now that you do have that knowledge, though, if you can’t see the analogy, that’s on you.
Nude mode. We’re all grown ups here.
Only if it.works both ways. Dong physics, anyone?
