What is one thing you would change about modern video games?

[SwampCreature]

The gaming world changes so rapidly with improvements in technology that most of us, even younger folks, have run into new hurdles in our hobby. Personally, I really detest pay-to-win functions in some games. The ability to just buy your way into near invincibility in multiplayer games feels very unfair and unwelcoming to people who just want to have fun without spending too much money. This can get especially damaging with gacha games - I’ve read many accounts of people becoming addicted exactly as they would with other, more mainstream types of gambling. In my ideal gaming community, in-game purchases wouldn’t create an unfair or unhealthy environment.

What about you? What would you change about modern gaming?

[K.O.]

I agree, I'm not a big fan of play-to-win, and I also don't like predatory mobile games, the ones where you can only play to a certain level and then you have to wait to refresh or pay money to go to the next level.

I also don't like studios pushing their workers to their breaking points to release games; it has ruined the mental health of so many people in that field and created so much trauma within game development. Games are about having fun, the people creating them shouldn't be treated poorly.

One other thing is that I HATE when you have to pay for DLC content after you've already bought a game. If you bought the game, you should get the entire game. I want developers and the people working on games to be compensated fairly, but I think putting out a half-finished game and then releasing paid 20 DLCs is incredibly predatory.

[SwampCreature]

@K-O You’re right, I remember hearing horror stories about the production team for Cyberpunk 2077 being pushed to outrageous extremes and then the game was a total letdown. All that crunch time for nothing.

I don’t mind SOME DLC, within reason - for example, the DLC for Breath of the Wild and FF7 Remake. Both games were complete and enjoyable without the DLC, they were truly just fun extras. I can get behind that sort of thing. But stuff like massive Day 1 patches? Come onnnnnn.

[chifii]

Related to KO's point about crunch...relying on patches to finish games after they're released. So many games today release with a whole bunch of bugs or even just missing features that have to be added after the fact, and I think publishers rely on the fact that they can patch the games as part of their production timelines. The Gen IV Pokemon remakes did something like this to save on production costs for physical releases - rather than use a larger (and more expensive) cartridge, they used the next size down and cut things like music and postgame content from the cartridge and used a day 1 patch to add it back in.

[TableTopProphet]

games pad out time to do things like it's a good thing, stretching a 20-hour game into 100 hours of fluff, and marketing it as a selling point.

Also, lazy writing troupes such as:

• sky beams of inconsistent unmeasurable power,

• the girl whose blood/memory/yoni is key to everything

• scopes of complexity beyond fathoming placed on the shoulders of the protagonist (you must save the world... no! the universe... in the first title, also... we're greenlit to asset flip for a sequel, so in part 2 you'll have to save the multi-verse!)

• BBEG is just a misunderstood serpentine leather daddy and we were the bad guy patsies all along. Right and wrong, good and evil, don't exist; only shades of gray and you should feel bad believing in your capitalist institutions. Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father. that'll be $70 plz (DLC not included).

• Stories written by committee say nothing of discernable value, in attempts to be all things to all people, therefore becoming nothing to nobody. i believe ( i know nothing) this happens when the marketing dept is given a loose idea, write some generic tripe for an announcement trailer, then the devs have to hire writers for the story after the gameplay or technology concept is established, including the replayability, and the international sales concerning eastern and western cultural inclusion. you want skybeams? because this is how you get sky beams! haha

^ saying all this doesn't help my contest submission, since i followed every trope in my own story. but that was sort of the point. it's written in our DNA and baked in our zeitgeist.

[SwampCreature]

@chifii They cut MUSIC from the physical release? That's pretty terrible! Was it all music or just some of it? Like if I played the cart without patching would there just be haunting silence while I catch pokemon? And they still charged full price, I assume. Yeah I completely agree that that needs to change.

[chifii]

@SwampCreature Not the full music. There's a feature like in Heartgold/Soulsilver where you can get an item that lets you listen to chiptune versions of the DPP songs (which made more sense for the games originally released on the Gameboy, but whatever). That music was the one that was screwed with. I'll try to find the video where I heard about this.

Edit: Oh no, it was the whole music.
Youtube Video

Edit2: Found the video I originally heard about this in. Timestamped to the relevant part.
Youtube Video

[Alexander Salkin]

I think a lot of the thoughts mentioned are things I would also agree on, such as microtransactions. And I think those are worse in regards to gambling for results, such as RPG mobile games where you have a garbage .5 to 3% percent chance of getting the newest flavor of the month unit just to stay competitive. I won't even look at anything with a paid gatcha at this point, which wipes out almost all mobile RPGs from being considered.

I could do with much less pvp focus in what are otherwise pve games. You know the drill, you play through a basic amount of pve content and then the game just drops off almost all interest in going further with it, with updates and content only catering to pvp where the real sales are made.

Daily Quests in anything. I hate dailies. You play through a handful of them and then it's just repeating the same thing ad-nauseaum to get some presumed grindy award and almost nothing else along the well. Games should NOT be chores. Similarly, having to adapt one's play due to a 'collect/complete x amount of this task' structure is incredibly boring. I don't want to feel compelled to do these to stay vaguely competitive or feel like I'm missing out on something essential. They're dull filler in every capacity.

Games with 'retro graphics' as a feature. Retro to what? I've been playing since Coleco and Intellivision were legit popular systems and these blocky low res designs, which are often set to move at high speeds to seem exciting... don't resemble anything from the past. It's like being offered a piece of history that never existed in the first place while making me suspicious that the developer couldn't get actual artists or anyone with inspired design theory involved.

Speaking of the past... I want to see more games in styles that used to be fun to play, because I'm very bored with anything featuring a super soldier goon in dark SWAT armor with a gun. Yes, there's still Metroidvanias (thank the gods) but even most of them are trying to be more like Symphony of the Night knock offs (which is not a bad thing necessarily) than other incarnations of that design. For example, I like the older Metroids with their haunting atmospheres. I miss the weird gradual -vanias on NES, like Clash at Demonhead, Rambo, Zelda 2, Bionic Commando, etc.

Let me see some titles done in the old black box/NES style. Show me the Twisted Metal car arena combat games. Let me get some 2D sidescrolling brawlers like Bad Dudes, Ninja Gaiden arcade, and Combatribes. Let me have some RPGs that are quirky like Earthbound and Ninja Kids, not steeped in thin allegories for post-modern depression. I don't know how else to put it. A lot of modern games strike me as boring and lacking design variety despite the sheer amount of developers.

[SwampCreature]

@chifii Wowwww thanks for the videos, that’s WILD. The audacity of the developers to release that mess!

[SwampCreature]

@Alexander-Salkin EXCELLENT points, I agree with you on everything but I’m especially gonna focus on what you said about PVE games with required PVP. I really can’t stand PVP because, aside from the actual difficulty level of the game, there’s the additional struggle of dealing with other players who are often impatient, rude, or downright hostile to anyone who hasn’t spent hundreds of hours learning detailed strategies. I used to be a heavy World of Warcraft player but NEVER did PVP because entering a PVP zone as a beginner was an exercise in frustration. New players are targeted and harassed to the point where it’s not even worth trying to learn. This is especially true of games like League of Legends or DoTA - they’re extremely intimidating to new players who will get bullied off the game before even having time to improve. I much prefer the fully-optional PVP available in games like GTA V (and I believe RDR2 had a similar option but I’ve not played it so I’m not sure). I play to relax, not get griefed and screamed at by someone who forgot games are supposed to be fun.

[Ezra]

@TableTopProphet
So I'm trying to write a book or three, and I gotta say, I definitely have been trying to avoid most of these and then some. Don't get me wrong, sometimes epic fantasy is fun because I think deep down, we all want to be that hero who saves them all or whatever. People want to feel important, but the day to day minutiae is the best most people will ever get. Fiction lets us be special in a world where most are just expendable.

[TableTopProphet]

@Ezra
well said. I think in gaming culture there is a lot working against the writers. Deadlines, fitting the world around the technology and core gameplay concept. Making the story lucid enough for end game or replayability, target demo age range being too wide, a minefield of stereotypes to avoid offenses, stock holders and corporate suits just wanting what more of what is already proven to work, using world lore to place forced importance on cosmetics thru microtransactions... it's probably not bad writing, just too many hoops for good writers to jump thru.

[Ezra]

@TableTopProphet I would definitely agree with that. Red Tape slows if not completely halts everything. I'm sure even LiveTale will experience some of these but I am really hoping they stay true to what they set out to do. I adore the concept of being able to visually see a world or story I create. Like a build-your-own-adventure book lol.

When I was younger, I couldn't decide what form my story should take. At first I thought I would make it a manga. And while I still would love to, I don't have the time to learn to draw the background things like buildings, scenery, transport vehicles etc.

Then I had the idea of it being a video game, but again, I would need to learn to code and probably a plethora of skills I lack.

So I settle on books. But with LiveTale, it is possible that someday I could do it more like a game. It would take a lot more tweaking though since I have been adapting it to a novel for years now lol.

[TableTopProphet]

@Ezra did you make the finals?