What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?

[Vinyadan]

Limited save slots were very much a limitation of the hardware, rather than a design choice, I'm not sad to see it go.

I read an interesting story about hardware limitations and how it changed games.

It said that Space Invaders was actually written without speed increase. But, the more aliens you shot, the more system power you freed up, and it was put to running the game faster. So the last aliens moved far faster, and the difficulty increased the closer you were to win.

This changed videogames forever, as, especially in arcades, there now was an expectation that the game would get more hectic the further you went.

I didn't check if there were earlier games with increasing difficulty, however.

[Bohandas]

Health packs. I'm quite glad most modern games have health regeneration. Of course, health packs can add to the strategy of the game. Halo: Combat Evolved is considered the first game to introduce "health regeneration" mechanic (which was actually energy shields recharging) but it also had health packs and you could strategically backtrack while playing on Legendary difficulty. It balanced out. But over all it can get quite annoying in an old game, where you reach some sort of a boss fight and you have only few HP points left after you fought your way there and no health packs around. Then your final battle comes down to mere luck.

And then half the time you have to go all the way back to the [redacted] beginning of the [redacted] level because the game also has limited saves. This problem is especially common in roguelikes.

[warty goblin]

The thing I genuinely don't miss is the various miseries of old interfaces. Not that new interfaces are necessarily good, but some of the older ones are just downright hostile. Take for instance original Age of Wonders, a game near and dear to my heart. If you want to make your elf archer shoot the bad man, you have to select the archery ability from the menu, then select the dude you want to kill. If you just click on the bad guy, your archer will walk up to him and stand there gormlessly.

I should point out at this juncture that archers have no melee attacks, and are completely useless when adjacent to an enemy.

Or the original Fallout games. They could be the greatest achievement of humanity to date, and I'll never know. Because I'd rather clean out my toilet with my face than deal with that interface.

I'm also going to go with checkpoints/designated save points. If I haven't played the game before, I won't really know how long any particular stretch between save points takes and if I misjudge how much time it takes to get to the next save point I might have to drop the game and go do something else before I get there. Beyond that, re-clearing an area I've already mostly gone through just because there's one last encounter that I didn't beat the first time through is not something that I consider to be particularly enjoyable - sure, if the game's combat system is enjoyable then it might be fun to decide not to progress and instead just fight a bunch of stuff repeatedly for a while, but I'd much rather that be up to me than down to the game designer's decision that if you don't reach Y after hitting X then you have to do everything between X and Y again.

Tragically the limited save location thing is very far from dead, because Dark Souls brought it back. And somehow convinced an entire generation that a crappy save system plus the system not needing to save a complex worldstate somehow was good game design. Personally I can't stand it. And now because every third game has decided it needs to be Dark Souls, I have to screen everything for just how obnoxious their save system is.

[Erloas]

Or the original Fallout games. They could be the greatest achievement of humanity to date, and I'll never know. Because I'd rather clean out my toilet with my face than deal with that interface.

What was wrong with the original Fallout interface? It was faster to know the keyboard shortcuts, but it worked well for me. There are also quite a few similarly designed more contemporary games that use essentially the same interface, and I've been enjoying those too. I can't even think of the games at this point, but I've found myself a few times wishing they would have went with, what I think of as, the classic tactical combat interface of Fallout and other games of that era.

[Cespenar]

Fallout can come out to seem outright minimalist when you play stuff like the original X-coms, Jagged Alliance, etc.

[LuckGuy]

The thing that keeps me from still playing the original XComs 1 and 2 and Jagged Alliance 2 (which are otherwise near perfect games) is the "where's the last bad guy" issue. Nothing like having an epic shootout for control of the sector only to spend 20 more minutes to find the last guy hiding in the closet... especially when he gets a free shot when you open the door and the game mechanics don't let you shoot through the closet door.

[Glimbur]

I am not a fan of grinding for ultimate gear, especially as a rare drop. I have a level 99 save of Earthbound where I was looking for the Sword of Kings. Blech.

[Lord Torath]

*Intrusive DRM that made you copy a passage from the instruction manual in order to start the game
*Intrusive DRM that required you to have the cd or disk inserted in order to start the game

These days I'd almost prefer this to the always-on internet requirements, or the DRM Software that can damage your system.

I agree with Hunter Noventa. I'd much rather have a code to enter once at the beginning of each session than have to be continuously logged into the internet.

Tragically the limited save location thing is very far from dead, because Dark Souls brought it back. And somehow convinced an entire generation that a crappy save system plus the system not needing to save a complex worldstate somehow was good game design. Personally I can't stand it. And now because every third game has decided it needs to be Dark Souls, I have to screen everything for just how obnoxious their save system is.

Horizon: Zero Dawn has this, in that you need to find a Campfire to save. But you can Fast-Travel to campfires, so it's not that onerous.

[Bohandas]

Or the original Fallout games. They could be the greatest achievement of humanity to date, and I'll never know. Because I'd rather clean out my toilet with my face than deal with that interface.

I agree. The interface for the first two Fallouts is absolutely terrible. Plus, somehow they move slow as molasses even on modern machines.

[Squark]

The thing I genuinely don't miss is the various miseries of old interfaces. Not that new interfaces are necessarily good, but some of the older ones are just downright hostile. Take for instance original Age of Wonders, a game near and dear to my heart. If you want to make your elf archer shoot the bad man, you have to select the archery ability from the menu, then select the dude you want to kill. If you just click on the bad guy, your archer will walk up to him and stand there gormlessly.

I should point out at this juncture that archers have no melee attacks, and are completely useless when adjacent to an enemy.

Or the original Fallout games. They could be the greatest achievement of humanity to date, and I'll never know. Because I'd rather clean out my toilet with my face than deal with that interface.



Tragically the limited save location thing is very far from dead, because Dark Souls brought it back. And somehow convinced an entire generation that a crappy save system plus the system not needing to save a complex worldstate somehow was good game design. Personally I can't stand it. And now because every third game has decided it needs to be Dark Souls, I have to screen everything for just how obnoxious their save system is.

Soulsborne's combination of checkpoints+one save file that autosaves constantly doesn't bother me... in the Souls games themselves. I suspect a lot of imitators are a lot less artful about pacing, though.

[Amechra]

Soulsborne's combination of checkpoints+one save file that autosaves constantly doesn't bother me... in the Souls games themselves. I suspect a lot of imitators are a lot less artful about pacing, though.

Yeah.

One of the advantages that the Soulsborne games have is that the level design is filled with persistent shortcuts. Imitators that don't shove ladders that you can kick down or doors that you can unlock everywhere are messing up the formula.

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Personally, I'm glad to see the back of RPGs where they didn't have space to give you a breakdown of new equipment. So you'd have to buy it and hope that it was better than your old stuff...

[veti]

I'd like to put in a word in favour of minigames. Some of my favourite games ever have been basically a loosely-strung-together series of minigames.

Most Zelda games, for instance, and particularly Twilight Princess which is just the best. The ultimate example for me would be Chocobo Tales, which doesn't even have any real gameplay between minigames. Still heaps of fun.

[danzibr]

I am not a fan of grinding for ultimate gear, especially as a rare drop. I have a level 99 save of Earthbound where I was looking for the Sword of Kings. Blech.

Ooohhh I heartily agree. I remember grinding for Poo’s sword for a few hours before I gave up just never got it.

Pretty much everything else mentioned in the thread doesn’t *really* bother me, but those hella rare drops, ugh.

In FFIV there’s a rare drop from a rare mob that lets you get the best armor in the game. Way less than 1% chance to get it. I grinded (ground?) for that for a long time, never got it. Disturbs the completionist in me.

[Rynjin]

Ooohhh I heartily agree. I remember grinding for Poo’s sword for a few hours before I gave up just never got it.

Pretty much everything else mentioned in the thread doesn’t *really* bother me, but those hella rare drops, ugh.

In FFIV there’s a rare drop from a rare mob that lets you get the best armor in the game. Way less than 1% chance to get it. I grinded (ground?) for that for a long time, never got it. Disturbs the completionist in me.

If we're talking "old mechanics that should stay dead" and Final Fantasy, completely missable items.

FInal Fantasy XII's Zodiac Spear is one of the most egregious examples of this I've ever seen. The only way to get it is to NOT open a series of nondescript containers mixed in with other containers randomly scattered around the world; opening a single one of these arbitrarily flagged containers despawns the Zodiac Spear when you could get it later. Literally the only way you would know to not do this is by using a guide.

[Kitten Champion]

If we're talking "old mechanics that should stay dead" and Final Fantasy, completely missable items.

FInal Fantasy XII's Zodiac Spear is one of the most egregious examples of this I've ever seen. The only way to get it is to NOT open a series of nondescript containers mixed in with other containers randomly scattered around the world; opening a single one of these arbitrarily flagged containers despawns the Zodiac Spear when you could get it later. Literally the only way you would know to not do this is by using a guide.

I personally like that, mostly because it makes the game more interesting to have this level of mystery around it.

That, and you can certainly beat the game and side content without jumping through insane hoops to get a specific unique item with difficult conditions attached to it, but those who do can get that additional sense of accomplishment of completing these more extreme challenges well before the days of trophies.

Tying it to a pure RNG mechanic is annoying though, as the only point to it is how long you can repeatedly press buttons before you legitimately can't take it anymore and give up.

Edit: Though, that's not really a defunct game mechanic. People still need to hunt for Shiny variants of Pokemon in every successive generation after all.

[Jasdoif]

Literally the only way you would know to not do this is by using a guide.

Ah, now there's a "mechanic" I don't miss: "buy the official strategy guide to get the best gear". At least with its better-gear-through-DLC descendant you know up-front that you're buying into it....

[Cikomyr]

Gear degradation and need to repair.

Unless the idea of gear rotation is built in the game's theme and story, forcing you to stop your adventuring to go back and repair your **** is annoying as hell. And useless. And pointless.

It was annoying Diablo, it was annoying in WoW.

Dying Light, at least, made good us of the mechanic and the thematic.

It was ****ing pointless in Fallout 3.

The designers of that sort of mechanic should have taken cues of Penalty vs Bonus. Instead of "repairing" your gear when it breaks down, your skill should allow you to "fine tune" your gear that slowly reverts to normal. Akin how "XP penalty for overplaying" in WoW became, after protests, "XP Bonus at the start of your session". The numbers didn't change, but people are more receptive to a bonus that you lose instead of a penalty you accrue.

[LaZodiac]

I'm not sure how a stationary save point would have helped. In games where you can save anywhere, the solution to running out of power is to just save more often. "Save early, save often" is a creed for a reason.

When you can only save in certain places, you can just get ****ed. Only have 5 minutes of battery left but the nearest save point is a 10 minute walk? Too bad for you.

Answering this question since it's actually a reason for why I think having save spots AND the ability to save on the fly is good!

Seeing a save point will remind you "right I should save my game". That's it. That's all a save point should be used for, and with proper use it would ensure that 90% of the time, you don't lose your progress due to battery because you're reminded to save frequently in an unobtrusive way.

For JRPGs specifically - and mostly FF - the 9999 number limit. It makes the mechanics nearing the end of the game increasingly less interesting.

The second is related to FF as well as it's particularly found in old JRPGs, but poorly translated or just plain uncommunicative games where the next objective to moving the game along is opaque to say the least. Like where you have to talk with some specific NPCs in the world, in a specific order, with a specific item. It's one thing to have objectives be something the player has to puzzle out, and another to maybe give a vague sentence suggesting what you ought to do that got muddled even more through the localization.

One recent-ish example I went through was in Pokemon Red. To get through a checkpoint and continue the game you need to pass a guard blocking it, who, if prompted, will say he's thirsty. Which might be a pretty clear clue if, for example, there was a specific place to buy beverages in the game world or you could win something beverage-related at an arranged battle somewhere... something like that. However, you get bottled water, lemonade, and soda as regular items throughout the game to give to Pokemon that you can buy from a dozen vending machines. The game could've done something to specify which drink the guard wanted so you got the clue, but the only indication that the beverages in your inventory don't work is that you cannot pass. Of course, what it comes down to is you need a specific key item, tea, to pass through.

Usually these are more along the lines of "you need to visit every village/town/city on the map and talk to every available NPC and hope maybe something will happen" kinds of flags though.

I literally never remember where the tea ever and that makes the few times I've replayed Firered Leafgreen stupid hard out of nowhere.

As for game mechanics I don't like... possibly controversial, but I had "over the shoulder third person camera's". They're always so up in your face, and makes you feel like you can't see half the screen... because you can't. I've been playing Control (which rules by the way) and it just, the OTS camera is just kinda frustrating.

[tonberrian]

I'm not a fan of being jumped by random encounters from nowhere. Luckily, it looks like all the JRPGs that relied on that are now putting an enemies on the overworld to bump into (or not) to start battles, and that's much better.

[warty goblin]

I agree. The interface for the first two Fallouts is absolutely terrible. Plus, somehow they move slow as molasses even on modern machines.

We can all be grateful that Bethesda at least kept something of the old games, although to be fair modern Fallout interfaces suck in entirely new and exciting ways. Progress!

Honestly when it comes to inventories, I remain inexplicably fond of inventory tetris systems. Easy to parse visually, easy to get a sense of how much space you have left, and generally at least somewhat intuitive. Plus they tend to be small enough that they keep the designers from shoehorning in much in the way of a crafting system. Crafting, where interesting game design and engaging play mechanics go to die.

Soulsborne's combination of checkpoints+one save file that autosaves constantly doesn't bother me... in the Souls games themselves. I suspect a lot of imitators are a lot less artful about pacing, though.

All I can say is that having to redo large sections of a game because of infrequent checkpointing was considered bad design for something like fifteen years. Now apparently it's a feature, which still annoys the snot out of me. Surge 2 has legitimately great combat, but not legitimately great enough I want to redo the same fights six times on my way to work out how to beat that one actually hard part.

(And let's not mention the weirdness of tying enemy respawns to whether or not I decide to take a nap. Who would have thought my sleep habits were apparently of existential importance?)

[Rynjin]

All I can say is that having to redo large sections of a game because of infrequent checkpointing was considered bad design for something like fifteen years. Now apparently it's a feature, which still annoys the snot out of me. Surge 2 has legitimately great combat, but not legitimately great enough I want to redo the same fights six times on my way to work out how to beat that one actually hard part.

It's good because A.) Player buy-in (it's an up front convention of the genre you are CHOOSING to engage in rather than being forced to due to every game having it) and B.) The entire game is built around the concept and breaks down without it.

(And let's not mention the weirdness of tying enemy respawns to whether or not I decide to take a nap. Who would have thought my sleep habits were apparently of existential importance?)

It's because all the enemies function on the same metaphysical mechanics you do. When you die, you respawn at the bonfire. When they die, they respawn when you rest at a bonfire. Because lore, kinda.

[Bohandas]

It's good because A.) Player buy-in (it's an up front convention of the genre you are CHOOSING to engage in rather than being forced to due to every game having it) and B.) The entire game is built around the concept and breaks down without it.

I know any game with limited saves that I own I have bought despite the limitations, rather than because of them. It annoys me to know end that its so hard to, for example, find a game with procedurally generated levels where you can actually save and reload the save if you die. And there's really no reason not to be able to; if you don't want to finish the game nobody's forcing you to.

[Rynjin]

I know any game with limited saves that I own I have bought despite the limitations, rather than because of them. It annoys me to know end that its so hard to, for example, find a game with procedurally generated levels where you can actually save and reload the save if you die. And there's really no reason not to be able to; if you don't want to finish the game nobody's forcing you to.

The post you're responding to was about Dark Souls' checkpointing system, not limited saves. All content is saved instantly in a Souls game, so any progress you make is logged (you always keep items and whatnot if you die).

Although procedurally generated levels typically are found in Roguelikes (or Roguelites), where permadeath is what the game is built around, so again I don't find it to be a flaw in that context. Roguelike games are typically very short in the grand scheme, with the assumption that what will keep you coming back is repeated deaths resetting progress, and the procedural generation providing replayability. Removing the permadeath removes the reason to play the game after the first hour or so.

[Kitten Champion]

One old mechanic that I hadn't thought of until I watched The Wizard on Netflix recently, but the concept of high scores. As in, the old school concept of high scores on arcade machines that you'd get to input your initials on the leader-board for bragging rights. The idea kept going into home consoles but it was sort of vestigial at the point where you could save your game and no quarters were involved. For instance, old Mario games would attach point totals to defeating enemies and collecting stuff, but personally I can't recall ever actually thinking about the total once in my life.

While the concept of high scores in itself isn't bad exactly, in terms of game design evolution replacing it with more tangible in-game benefits for the player upon a successful performance is far more motivating and satisfying. I like unlocking stuff, it does keep me playing and wanting to improve myself just that bit more to get that whateveritis.

Sure, there are still leader-boards for some games with a bigger online element, but usually it's in a less abstract sort of way than some general point count like the seasonal boards in Diablo III.

[factotum]

Honestly when it comes to inventories, I remain inexplicably fond of inventory tetris systems. Easy to parse visually, easy to get a sense of how much space you have left, and generally at least somewhat intuitive.

I think the best inventory I ever saw was the one used in Might and Magic 6, 7 and 8, simply because it had absolutely huge, well-drawn representations of everything and looked really nice because of it.

[Cespenar]

I think the best inventory I ever saw was the one used in Might and Magic 6, 7 and 8, simply because it had absolutely huge, well-drawn representations of everything and looked really nice because of it.

Those were actually pretty enjoyable to look at and organize, due to the lost skill of nice-looking 2D (non-pixel) art.

[Hunter Noventa]

One old mechanic that I hadn't thought of until I watched The Wizard on Netflix recently, but the concept of high scores. As in, the old school concept of high scores on an arcade machines that you'd get to input your initials on the leader-board for bragging rights. The idea kept going into home consoles but it was sort of vestigial at the point where you could save your game and no quarters were involved. For instance, old Mario games would attach point totals to defeating enemies and collecting stuff, but personally I can't recall ever actually thinking about the total once in my life.

While the concept of high scores in itself isn't bad exactly, in terms of game design evolution replacing it with more tangible in-game benefits for the player upon a successful performance is far more motivating and satisfying. I like unlocking stuff, it does keep me playing and wanting to improve myself just that bit more to get that whateveritis.

Sure, there are still leader-boards for some games with a bigger online element, but usually it's in a less abstract sort of way than some general point count like the seasonal boards in Diablo III.

A handful of those older games on the NES and Genesis and the like would attach 'continues' to your score, while keeping lives separate. But yeah, there's not that much reason for it now.

[Bohandas]

The post you're responding to was about Dark Souls' checkpointing system, not limited saves. All content is saved instantly in a Souls game, so any progress you make is logged (you always keep items and whatnot if you die).

I've got issues with checkpoint saving too, and its basically the same issue on a smaller scale. I don't want to replay the same stretch of this level over and over again any more than I want to play the first level over and over again

[Triaxx]

One of the better things Bethesda did, was keeping both autosaves and free saving.

Original Fallout game interfaces were... functional. Which is a suitable term. The primary issue is nothing being labeled, which wasn't an issue in the days of paper manuals in the box. What does this button do? I can look it up. Now? If it's not labeled, you have to click it to find out. And the ones that were labeled were labeled confusingly. I mean, I guessed what a Skilldex was right away. But how many people even know what a Rolodex is now?

One thing I don't miss, is games assuming I started off knowing precisely what I'm doing. The fact that I can probably work out how to fly a plane myself, doesn't mean I want to try and go straight into a dogfight.

[druid91]

Or even just someone AT the local store who would comment "Franz, the guard at the gate, really likes tea."

TBF. In the original red the healing drinks WERE the key to get past. Lemonade I think it was.