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2019-11-06, 04:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2009
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2019-11-06, 05:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2016
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Last edited by Bohandas; 2019-11-06 at 05:42 PM.
"If you want to understand biology don't think about vibrant throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology" -Richard Dawkins
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2019-11-06, 09:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
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- Tail of the Bellcurve
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.
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2019-11-06, 11:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2006
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.
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2019-11-07, 09:46 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2007
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Fallout can come out to seem outright minimalist when you play stuff like the original X-coms, Jagged Alliance, etc.
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2019-11-07, 11:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2015
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Who watches the watchmen?
Queso ipso custodes! - Cheese it, the cops!
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2019-11-07, 12:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
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- Midwest, not Middle East
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.
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2019-11-07, 12:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2011
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- Sharangar's Revenge
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.
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.Warhammer 40,000 Campaign Skirmish Game: Warpstrike
My Spelljammer stuff (including an orbit tracker), 2E AD&D spreadsheet, and Vault of the Drow maps are available in my Dropbox. Feel free to use or not use it as you see fit!
Thri-Kreen Ranger/Psionicist by me, based off of Rich's A Monster for Every Season
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2019-11-07, 12:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2016
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
"If you want to understand biology don't think about vibrant throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology" -Richard Dawkins
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2019-11-07, 01:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2007
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Steam ID: The Great Squark
3ds Friend Code: 4571-1588-1000
Currently Playing: Warhammer 40000, Hades, Stellaris, Warframe
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2019-11-07, 02:33 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
- Location
- Where I live.
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.
---
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...
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2019-11-07, 02:36 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2009
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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."None of us likes to be hated, none of us likes to be shunned. A natural result of these conditions is, that we consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound." - Mark Twain
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2019-11-07, 02:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2010
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- Back forty.
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.
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2019-11-07, 03:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2016
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.
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2019-11-07, 04:12 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2012
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.Last edited by Kitten Champion; 2019-11-07 at 04:15 PM.
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2019-11-07, 04:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2007
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- Oregon, USA
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
FeytouchedBanana eldritch disciple avatar by...me!
The Index of the Giant's Comments VI―Making Dogma from Zapped Bananas
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2019-11-07, 04:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2012
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- Montreal
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.
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2019-11-07, 04:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2011
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- Canada
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.
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.Last edited by LaZodiac; 2019-11-07 at 04:53 PM.
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2019-11-07, 05:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.
The name is "tonberrian", even when it begins a sentence. It's magic, I ain't gotta 'splain why.
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2019-11-07, 10:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
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- Tail of the Bellcurve
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.
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?)Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.
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2019-11-07, 10:03 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2016
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.
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.
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2019-11-07, 11:36 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2016
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.
Last edited by Bohandas; 2019-11-07 at 11:40 PM.
"If you want to understand biology don't think about vibrant throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology" -Richard Dawkins
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2019-11-08, 12:46 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2016
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.
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2019-11-08, 01:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2012
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.Last edited by Kitten Champion; 2019-11-10 at 07:11 PM.
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2019-11-08, 02:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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- Manchester, UK
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2019-11-08, 05:31 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2007
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Those were actually pretty enjoyable to look at and organize, due to the lost skill of nice-looking 2D (non-pixel) art.
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2019-11-08, 08:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2007
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
"And if you don't, the consequences will be dire!"
"What? They'll have three extra hit dice and a rend attack?"
Factotum Variants!
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2019-11-08, 10:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2016
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
"If you want to understand biology don't think about vibrant throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology" -Richard Dawkins
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2019-11-08, 11:06 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2006
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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.I am trying out LPing. Check out my channel here: Triaxx2
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2019-11-08, 11:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2007
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- Lemuria
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?