Mechanics you wish more games copied?

[deuxhero]

Lufia 2 had an optional dungeon called Ancient Cave. Whenever you started this dungeon you were brought down to level 1 (you get your levels back when you exit) and lose all your items (also get them back when you leave) and you had to find everything from scratch making for a pesudo-roguelite. This would be really fun in a game with more varied character building options, but as far as I know the only thing to copy it was a Final Fantasy V romhack (which is good and shows how it can be fun in a game with more variety).

 

[Vorark]

The "counterattack to heal a portion of you health" in Bloodborne was a nice twist to an ARPG, pushed the player to be more aggressive and quit chugging potions blood vials.

 

[Allyriadil]

I really liked hunting down and destroying monster lairs in Might and Magic III.
It stopped monster respawns and gave a sweet reward.

 

[bobs]

I really liked hunting down and destroying monster lairs in Might and Magic III.
It stopped monster respawns and gave a sweet reward.

Yes.

Also, enemies showing on map instead of using classic random encounter.

 

[Siveon]

God Hand had a move select system where you can select and customize individual attacks to suit your playstyle. Several games have used things like this, but not as well and with not as fun gameplay.

Basically copy God Hand for chrissake.

 

[Reinhardt]

tb blobbers with 6+ party size

 

[A horse of course]

Strip poker should be incorporated into more genres. For example, imagine if every combat encounter in PoE2 triggered a pop-up of a random Obsidian employee, who would remove an item of clothing each time you buffed a party member.

 

[Citizen]

Strip poker should be incorporated into more genres. For example, imagine if every combat encounter in PoE2 triggered a pop-up of a random Obsidian employee, who would remove an item of clothing each time you buffed a party member.

Not sure if serious?

 

[A horse of course]

They look better than PoE2 portraits.

 

[HeyCheckOutHowHardICanPee]

God Hand had a move select system where you can select and customize individual attacks to suit your playstyle. Several games have used things like this, but not as well and with not as fun gameplay.

Basically copy God Hand for chrissake.

While on the topic of God Hand, I'm really surprised that no games have bogarded its dynamic difficulty system.

 

[fast]

While on the topic of God Hand, I'm really surprised that no games have bogarded its dynamic difficulty system.

Resident Evil 4 comes to mind. More of a background thing than a selling point, though.


going back to the thread's subject, a few mechanics I thought were neat and could be carried over to other games:

• Anybody play Divinity: Original Sin 2? I really liked the option to select a musical instrument that would play when your character is selected. It didn't change anything in-game, really- but it was still sort of neat.
• How about auto-battle mode, in turn-based RPGs? Gets annoying having to spam 'A' every six seconds.

 

[789456123]

level scaling

 

[fast]

level scaling

I really hate this. Nothing takes me out of immersion faster than going back to where I just came from, only to find I'm still having the same amount of trouble murdering the wildlife.

It can be good, done properly. I really liked the way Darkest Dungeon slowly ramps up difficulty by gating high-level characters to high-level tasks, but I'm not sure if that's technically level scaling. Darkest had an enormous amount of smart additions to an otherwise boring RPG that made it something better than the sum of its parts.

But yeah, the way Skyrim and Oblivion handled level scaling was granular and very noticeable. Maybe that's what I'm thinking of when I knee-jerk to hating level scaling.

 

[Gregz]

An auto-resolve combat button. Especially for long drawn-out encounters.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

luck system from hard west

I played it and even I don't remember it. More explanations necessary.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Mustawd]

1. The ESPN halftime presentation in NFL 2k2. Almost 20 years later and this hasn’t been matched. Fucking EA.

2. General replayability. Just off the top off my head games like Resident Evil 2, Chrono Trigger and Super Mario World come to mind. These games had relatively short main games but had enough gameplay to keep bringing you back. And I don’t mean bullshit cheevos like beating the entire game while shooting only one bullet (fuck off half life episode 1). Now everything is bullshit open world crap that feels empty af.

3. General linearity. Bring it back. I’m sick of open worlds. Bring back tight gameplay instead of MMO-like mechanics. Too many games to name.

4. I really like Torchlight’s “retire” mechanic. Where you cpuld retire a character and you’d get a special item for any new char you wanted to make.

 

[Reinhardt]

Strip poker should be incorporated into more genres. For example, imagine if every combat encounter in PoE2 triggered a pop-up of a random Obsidian employee, who would remove an item of clothing each time you buffed a party member.

Not sure if serious?

Help. I can't find Josh.

 

[Durandal]

A kind of POW mechanic like the POW items in Shinobi III and Castlevania Bloodlines (and I guess Super Mario too), where you can find a power-up which lets you deal tons of damage, but it disappears when you get hit. Basically a rich-get-richer approach where getting better at avoiding damage translates into letting you kill things faster. Alien Soldier did something similar as well where you had access to a super-powerful attack when you were at 100% health, though you sacrificed a little bit when using it so you couldn't spam it infinitely.

Being able to shift between walking the floor and ceiling like in Alien Soldier (or VVVVVVV if you're more familiar with that). There's some potential to be had here. Contra III did something similar by letting you climb on ceilings as seen in the Terminator boss fight, though the game doesn't explore the concept as much as I'd have liked.

Dash/dodging moves doubling as a means of offense by letting you tackle things. There's something satisfyingly primal about charging top speed into some poor shmuck.

 

[Vagiel]

The gothic idea that when people beat you in a fight they don't always kill you but rob you and leave you there. Expand this with c&c like reputation loss or prison punishment and add a more rigid save system so you don't just load to before a fight and I believe it would make for a very interesting RPG mechanic.

 

[fast]

how about being able to write on maps like in daggerfall?

oh and KOTOR 2's alignment system, where you could slowly shift npc alignments with some well-placed dialogue choices.

One more: did anyone ever play Omikron? it had loads of interesting mechanics but the one I'm most fond of was the way it handled death. You (permanently) lost the character you were playing, and your soul and consciousness swapped to a different person. Might be misremembering that but I do remember it was awesome.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

The gothic idea that when people beat you in a fight they don't always kill you but rob you and leave you there.

Same thing in Unreal World. Maybe something similar in PST, can't remember.

Don't like this mechanic, because 99% people would still reload. It only works for an MMO.

and add a more rigid save system

When you can't save at any time (except maybe in combat) = horrible.

 

[Grauken]

Save points or any system that limits saving to a few safe areas (although not the crazy kind of save system limit RoA or Ishar 1 had)

The map system of Mordor: use teleports, fall down a hole, etc. and the map stops working until you reach previously mapped area

Everything that stops rest spamming, either from areas where you can't rest to areas where monsters will almost always attack you during sleep (on the other hand, allow for areas that are safe and can only be spotted by certain characters like rangers)

Not really a mechanic, but I wished more games would only have one difficulty and if people didn't liked it they could either get better or get the fuck out

 

[Serus]

The gothic idea that when people beat you in a fight they don't always kill you but rob you and leave you there.

Same thing in Unreal World. Maybe something similar in PST, can't remember.

Don't like this mechanic, because 99% people would still reload. It only works for an MMO.

and add a more rigid save system

When you can't save at any time (except maybe in combat) = horrible.

99% would still reload is not a great reason. Tons of people save-scum, reloading at the slightest setback suffered. Dosn't mean that you remove all elements from games that cause this behaviour. I think it's a cool feature. But then my favourite genre for years have been roguelikes and other no-reload games so my perception is skewed.

Not if the game saves for you automatically at all times... again, roguelikes and no-reload games perspective speaking.