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Not losing all your progress just because you died and hadn't saved in awhile. Almost no games outside of Saints Row/GTA do this. This hasn't caught on yet, really, it was introduced as a concept, by, what was it called, ULTIMA. It wasn't that long ago, only as recently as 1981.
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SCPM: Being able to save anywhere, anytime. Nowadays, it feels many games don't include saving at all and just slap 'roguelike' in the description. I know it can be very challenging to program, especially for complex games, but I don't have enough free gaming time to be forced to repeat often lengthy sequences to progress in the game.
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Breja: This. Or at least well placed checkpoints. I lost count how many games have checkpoints placed 5 minutes before some actuall action starts, some dangerous part where you can actually die. Then you have to play again through a slow walking and talking part, or some very easy "shoot two basic enemies" part over and over again, just to get to what actually gets you killed. It can be a terrible waste of time. Die enough times in a place like this, and suddenly what could have been done in 20 minutes turns out to have taken an hour.
Do new games really not allow you to save anytime, to the extent that this feature can be called rare? I'm seriously asking because this seemed to be a standard (it was in fact rare to find a game without it...) for the past two decades. The newest game I played, Shadow Warrior 2013, had this too.
Post edited September 23, 2015 by ZFR
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HereForTheBeer: The "aww, screw it!" option in linear campaigns that allows you to skip a mission.
Hmm, doesn't this completely defeat the purpose of a linear campaign and the game?
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The option to play a female character is rarer than it ought to be.
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HereForTheBeer: The "aww, screw it!" option in linear campaigns that allows you to skip a mission.
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aihre: Hmm, doesn't this completely defeat the purpose of a linear campaign and the game?
Depends on how tightly the story is tied together. For example, Total Annihilation's campaign story isn't so complex that missing one map screws up the whole thing. On the other hand, doesn't getting stuck at an early mission defeat the purpose of buying a game with all the follow-on missions that you'll never get to see? I'd like to see the option to skip a mission if I find that I'm too thick-headed to beat it. For myself, the usual suspects are timed missions, or those with a limited number of turns.
-Permadeath. (more common in indie scene, where mainstream has tough time dealing with it)

-enforced Iron Man modes. (as above)

-choices that actually make a difference beyond a change in dialogue. (extremely rare)

They're features, right?
Post edited September 23, 2015 by micktiegs_8
Being able to move random objects around to your benefit. I remember there was this boss fight in Divinity: Original Sin that I kept dying at, so I took a bunch of candelabras and made a cage out of them so that no one could get to me. Cheap as hell, but I love stuff like that.
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227: Being able to move random objects around to your benefit. I remember there was this boss fight in Divinity: Original Sin that I kept dying at, so I took a bunch of candelabras and made a cage out of them so that no one could get to me. Cheap as hell, but I love stuff like that.
You might find Terraria to be worth playing.
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dtgreene: You might find Terraria to be worth playing.
Already have, though it's not quite the same thing since bosses can move through walls and can't activate switches (so no elaborate traps unless you set them off manually and have perfect timing). Or did that change in one of the newer patches? I haven't played since version 1.2.4.1.
Something that I liked from Illusion of Gaia was how there was no grinding for increasing your power. Instead, each room had a set of extra enemies that would give a stat boost when defeated. Once cleared, those extra enemies will not return.

I very much appreciate treasure radars and counters. Being able to know that an area has been cleared of stuff to find is a time saver.

When it comes to tile-based dungeon crawlers, I would like them to use a mapping system similar to Etrian Odyssey. You put down the walls and markers, eventually creating a useful map. It is extremely rewarding to play a Newgame+ and finding your maps preserved.

Tyrian has a slightly different money system: Trading in equipment or downgrading will return 100% of the money that you have invested. I think this is very cool, as it encourages the player to try out all kinds of gear.

Some RPGs provide the ability to infinitely avoid enemy encounters. Of course, you would miss out on the experience and drops they could have provided. Extremely useful when you don't feel like fighting through a horde of baddies.
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HereForTheBeer: On the other hand, doesn't getting stuck at an early mission defeat the purpose of buying a game with all the follow-on missions that you'll never get to see?
That's what cheats and walkthroughs are for?

I've beat my head against my share of games, but if I wasn't ace enough to beat a mission, I'd rather run the gauntlet with cheats than have an option to skip sections entirely. A miss-the-jail card doesn't seem worthy compared to busting out of the jail, even if did it through a get-out-of-jail-free card.

But then again I like to play story-heavy games :P
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Sabin_Stargem: I very much appreciate treasure radars and counters. Being able to know that an area has been cleared of stuff to find is a time saver.
[...]
Some RPGs provide the ability to infinitely avoid enemy encounters. Of course, you would miss out on the experience and drops they could have provided. Extremely useful when you don't feel like fighting through a horde of baddies.
Great ones here. I can't stand grinding, so the inability to avoid enemy encounters is an instant dealbreaker.
Post edited September 23, 2015 by aihre
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Sabin_Stargem: Something that I liked from Illusion of Gaia was how there was no grinding for increasing your power. Instead, each room had a set of extra enemies that would give a stat boost when defeated. Once cleared, those extra enemies will not return.

I very much appreciate treasure radars and counters. Being able to know that an area has been cleared of stuff to find is a time saver.

When it comes to tile-based dungeon crawlers, I would like them to use a mapping system similar to Etrian Odyssey. You put down the walls and markers, eventually creating a useful map. It is extremely rewarding to play a Newgame+ and finding your maps preserved.

Tyrian has a slightly different money system: Trading in equipment or downgrading will return 100% of the money that you have invested. I think this is very cool, as it encourages the player to try out all kinds of gear.

Some RPGs provide the ability to infinitely avoid enemy encounters. Of course, you would miss out on the experience and drops they could have provided. Extremely useful when you don't feel like fighting through a horde of baddies.
If you liked Illusion of Gaia's lack of grinding, you will like Super Mario Bros.'s lack of grinding. In Super Mario Bros., you can't backtrack (without dying or going into a pipe that takes you backwards, and the latter is rare), so there is no way that enemies can respawn.

Ultima 3 is like Tyrian in that you can get back your full investment when you sell it.

Avoiding enemy encounters in RPGs has a few issues. First, quite often the enemies move in real time, turning the game into an action game, especially when you are trying to avoid enemies. Second, being able to avoid encounters at no cost breaks resource management challenges; a better solution would be to have encounter evasion use up a resource and have enemies drop immediate pickups that restore that resource and other resources.

(An immediate pickup is an item that has an immediate effect when picked up and can't be saved for later; an example is the small hearts in most Zelda games that restore one heart of health when picked up.)
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Sabin_Stargem: Some RPGs provide the ability to infinitely avoid enemy encounters. Of course, you would miss out on the experience and drops they could have provided. Extremely useful when you don't feel like fighting through a horde of baddies.
I'm quite partial to the approach the Mother series had towards jrpg battle arrangements. Not only could enemies be avoided on the over world map, all battles could be initiated to either advantage or disadvantage the player based on point of contact. Moreover, when the player had leveled up their characters a fair amount, battles with weaker enemies were won automatically and yielded both experience points and item drops without the boring grind of facing low level monsters.
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Sabin_Stargem: Some RPGs provide the ability to infinitely avoid enemy encounters. Of course, you would miss out on the experience and drops they could have provided. Extremely useful when you don't feel like fighting through a horde of baddies.
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astroclay: I'm quite partial to the approach the Mother series had towards jrpg battle arrangements. Not only could enemies be avoided on the over world map, all battles could be initiated to either advantage or disadvantage the player based on point of contact. Moreover, when the player had leveled up their characters a fair amount, battles with weaker enemies were won automatically and yielded both experience points and item drops without the boring grind of facing low level monsters.
It does, however, suffer the problem I mentioned: When you are trying to avoid encounters, the game turns into an action game. Visible enemies moving in real time works for an action game like Zelda 2 but not for an RPG like Earthbound or Saga Frontier.

Perhaps if it were handled like Lufia 2, where enemies only move when you do, this would work better. (Lufia 2 is like a roguelike, except that going next to an enemy starts a battle on a separate screen, and the world (with the exception of the Ancient Cave) is not randomly generated.)

Not that obvious a game feature, but more games should have bonus dungeons like Lufia 2's Ancient Cave, but with a suspend save so it doesn't have to be played in one sitting. (The GBC Lufia's Ancient Cave let you suspend save, making it much more feasible as you don't have to devote a large block of time to getting through the dungeons.)

Also, games that don't let you make hard saves just anywhere should always let you make suspend saves (that are deleted on reload) everywhere.
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Wishbone: Why is it then, that almost every game containing cutscenes also use the escape key for skipping them? It means that in most games, once a cutscene starts, you had damn well better stay glued to the screen until it's over, or you will miss it, because the damned things cannot be paused.

I'm a family man. My wife or son may need my help with something very quickly, the cat may knock something over, requiring quick action, lots of other things can happen while I'm playing a game. But if it happens during a cutscene, I usually have to choose between waiting for the cutscene to end, or skip the damned thing and pause the game, thereby potentially missing something important.
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andysheets1975: Heh, that would have been mine. I don't know what it is, but my wife has an amazing knack for interrupting my game time with urgent business precisely when an unpausable cut-scene has just begun to play. Often times I'll have to skip out of it and either reload later (hopefully I saved it not long before) or look the scene up on Youtube to see if I missed anything important.
I feel your pain. After 15 years, my wife has finally figured out that when I'm moving the mouse and pressing keys it means I'm actually playing the game and she tends to leave me alone. However when I take my hands away to watch a cut scene, that's right when she wants to start a conversation. The worst part is that it's not ever anything important, half the time its to help her answer a multiple choice question along the lines of "What word best describes you when you are alone?" for some stupid Facebook quiz to find out "What Style of Shoe are You" or something equally ridiculous.