[:plant:] "If _I_ were a game designer"

I'd like to see a lengthy rpg where they manage to actually keep the story interesting and the difficulty balanced for more than half the game. Far too often, the first half of a game is really involving with a well thought out story then towards the end either becomes a simple chasing the bad guy around effort or gets completely nonsensical. Given how much companies spend on graphics and shit, you'd think they could hire a decent story-writed from time to time. I'd also like to see shoplifting and simple murder of shopkeepers implemented more often. I know some games do it to a better or worse extent but it's still really frustrating when playing a more "traditional" rpg and you're tooling up to save the world by killing the end boss and some stuck up shop keeper still demands full price for all the gear he has, with no recourse to just taking it off him. Also, it's slightly ridiculous that shop keepers have bottomless pockets full of gold and will happily buy any item you have in whatever quantities you have it. Also it'd be nice to see more games where the main character isn't the centre of what's going on in the world. One of the best things about FFXII was that Vaan wasn't central to world events. He influenced things but the actual story in the wider sense was about Ashe, not Vaan, which was refreshing.

Also if I was a developer, I'd realise that making a game open world and hiding things in obscure places is only entertaining for people with OCD and doesn't automatically make a game more fun. Racing games especially, I buy racing games to race cars, not to develop better navigation skills or hunt down hidden jumps and secret areas.

I'd also implement leader boards that show who's the highest skilled, rather than has the most free time. Reward people using worse equipment for example. Give a person more points on the leaderboards for using a slower car or less armour or a worse gun. I'd certainly get rid of silly multiplayer achievements. Essentially, what fucks me off playing online is people boosting retarded achievements or playing in a way that jumps them up a rank, rather than helps the team win. In a team, objective based FPS game, I'd only give out points for caturing flags and defending and shit, not going off on solo killing sprees that whilst they help your personal rank, do fuck all to help your team win the match. These days, to be sure of getting in a team that stands a chance of winning an objective game, you need to bring your friends with you.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Isn't the Warhammer game, Tides of War or something, supposed to be more like that? Less resource management, more killing shit, like the much older PS games Shadow of the Horned Rat and the other one.

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Originally Posted by Crash Landon

I'd kill the hero off halfway through the story.

Wouldn't that knock you fuckers for a loop?

Given the hissy-fits a lot of people had when Metal Gear Solid ditched Snake after an hour, I imagine once word got out your game would come in for a fair bit of negative press. It'd be awesome if they did that in a Zelda or Mario game though, kill off Link halfway through and make you play the rest of the game out as a Metrosexual who spends more time crying to his girlfriend than killing bad guys.

Also, Qwarky, some of the Ghost Recon and Rainbow games have lost you the whole clip when you reload half-way through, like in Mafia. So did Black if memory serves, I don't think it's as uncommon as you think.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Qwarky

Personally I wouldn't mind the main character dying at the end of a game if it's done well enough. Most people have a knee-jerk reaction about protagonist death, and I kinda get it if you only think about spending all that time playing the game, only to be "rewarded" at the end with death anyway. But developers do this all the time with other games. How many escort missions have had you protect some person, guy or a girl, only to have them die in a cutscene just later anyway? I think those kinds of deaths are far bigger dick moves than the protagonist dying. I get more upset about NPC plot deaths then protagonist ones.

But it really depends on how you do it. There's been really stupid protagonist deaths in movies as well, and understandably it's those that games look to when trying to justify never killing off a protagonist. You want a franchise after all, and don't want to anger your players.

But again, that's just me. If your character achieves something, has something worth dying for, even eventually does, that would be just as satisfying as some bs happy ending. MGS4 certainly would have benefitted without the copout.


And Black did not have you lose your entire clip.

You could argue that the hero dies at the end of Final Fantasy X and the Last Remnant, although they sort of fade into limbo rather than die and you actually hear Rush talking after he's dead in TLR. Also Halo 3, Master Chief dies, why lie.

My bad, I could have sworn that was one game where you did, must just be Ghost Recon then.

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I think you guys are also all forgetting that

Spoiler:

Aeris dies

I was speaking idiomatically.