What options/features should be a standard for every game?

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

Like Bowsette said, many, many things. My number one would also be accessibility options, but since that's already been so well articulated, I'm going to go with performance settings and the option to change control bindings. I'll take stability in equal parts framerate and resolution over one or the other being inconsistent any day of the week. I would have preferred, for example, to have been able to lock Breath of the Wild's framerate to 30 and resolution to 720 than to have it generally stay at the bizarre number of 920p and occasionally drop below 20 fps. I don't need much in the way of graphics or performance, just stability. On the other note, it's kind of pathetic that Breath of the Wild doesn't let you rebind the controls, either. I like the new controls, but I think I might have preferred to keep the classic Zelda style (sword on . I would have at least liked the option to try that for myself. Nintendo's excuse for not including it was absolutely pathetic, too.

Sort of relevant, but most graphically intensive games for the Xbox One and PS4 do use dynamic resolution scaling to maintain a consistent frame rate. I'm not sure if Breath of the Wild does, but I know that games like Doom 4 and Wolfenstein 2 on the Switch do so.

Also, yeh. Not being able to rebind controls is a cardinal sin of the gaming world.

 

[MapelSerup]

A plot summary and perhaps a control refresher. Sometimes I don’t have the time to play a game for a while, and it helps a lot.

 

[mαrkαsscoρ]

I was surprised to see Dragon Quest XI has a plot summary at the ready for every time you start up the game to remind you what was happening last time you played. Sometimes I drop games for long periods of time and feel lost when I eventually jump back into them, so this works from the practical perspective of reminding me what objective I was on and also helps keep the story's momentum. Don't know if this feature was new or not but it was my first time seeing it.

Dragon Quest 7 on 3ds had it, and I know plenty of other games had that sort of thing too like MGS The Twin Snakes and heck even Pokemon FireRed [not a plot summary but it shows you key events that last happened], but yeah plot summaries should've been a common thing ages ago

 

[Spirit]

Every game with cutscenes should have a theatre mode.

I always think it's a shame when you can only see a cutscene once in a game with no way to rewatch it. Cutscenes take work too, and to be unable to watch them feels like a waste of time and effort.

 

[Chevywolf30]

A sound mixer. Sometimes the music is really annoying (Hello, Snowpeak Ruins) or the music is really good and you dont want game sounds in the way.

 

[mαrkαsscoρ]

I thought of something, if a remake/remaster has updated music, there should always be an option to change to the original soundtrack
that's something I wish star fox 64 3d had b/c the updated tracks were sorta hit and miss, so I'm way more partial to 64's OST, or heck, how about playing link's awakening remake w/ the original game boy soundtrack and comparing them? having the option to do so can go a long way

 

[TheHeroofTime]

I thought of something, if a remake/remaster has updated music, there should always be an option to change to the original soundtrack
that's something I wish star fox 64 3d had b/c the updated tracks were sorta hit and miss, so I'm way more partial to 64's OST, or heck, how about playing link's awakening remake w/ the original game boy soundtrack and comparing them? having the option to do so can go a long way

I think that really depends on what kind of music the remaster uses. That feature would work really well for something like the Link's Awakening Remake, but for something like Final Fantasy VII Remake? No way. There's too much of a difference between the original and the remade music. There are also too many original tunes that weren't in the original soundtrack.

 

[mαrkαsscoρ]

I think that really depends on what kind of music the remaster uses. That feature would work really well for something like the Link's Awakening Remake, but for something like Final Fantasy VII Remake? No way. There's too much of a difference between the original and the remade music. There are also too many original tunes that weren't in the original soundtrack.

FF7 remake is a whole beast onto itself, so definitely not, but REmake 2 did have it if I remember right, so basically whenever applicable, there should be the option

 

[the8thark]

1.

Options to invert both camera axes.

I agree 100%. The players should have the choice of how they play.

2.

every game should have a control remap option

Agreed totally. This so needs to be a thing in every game. It's not only Nintendo that is bad at this, quite a lot of games don't have fully costomisable controls.

3.
Graphically intensive games to have better performance and better graphics modes. So you can choose if you want more frames or more and better pixels.

4.
An option to skip cutscenes. Because speedrunning and because after seeing them for the 52nd time they get boring. At that point we want to just get into the gameplay.

5.
Cloud saves. Not hard to do in 2020. So you can move your save to a new console or keep your save if your current console dies. Your saves are not lost.

 

[thePlinko]

Games should be designed so that they can be ported over, or at the very least consoles should be designed with previous hardware in mind. This is mainly because of the DS and how it’s games are close to impossible to play on later systems.

The Xbox Adaptive Controller is the best thing to happen to gaming in decades and it's embarrassing that it took so long to become a concept.

Not really. Until the Wii/DS era gaming was an incredibly niche hobby, so not seeing something like this until now is only natural. Hell, both of those consoles already took major strides to make gaming accessible to anyone, disabled people included.

but yes, you are correct in that this should be standard from now on. Also, I believe Nintendo just finished their own prototype.

 

[twilitfalchion]

If a game is a remake or remaster of an older game, an option to use the original graphics would be nice. Considering what the game's age would likely be, I don't think it'd be that difficult to add them in as a bonus feature.

 

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

Games should be designed so that they can be ported over, or at the very least consoles should be designed with previous hardware in mind. This is mainly because



Not really. Until the Wii/DS era gaming was an incredibly niche hobby, so not seeing something like this until now is only natural. Hell, both of those consoles already took major strides to make gaming accessible to anyone, disabled people included.

but yes, you are correct in that this should be standard from now on. Also, I believe Nintendo just finished their own prototype.

The Wii might have introduced gaming to a lot of non-gamers, but the Adaptive Controller introduced gaming to people who were physically unable to game.

 

[thePlinko]

The Wii might have introduced gaming to a lot of non-gamers, but the Adaptive Controller introduced gaming to people who were physically unable to game.

Right, but the Wii and DS set things in motion for that to happen is my point.

 

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

Right, but the Wii and DS set things in motion for that to happen is my point.

Not really. The Adaptive Controller makes it accessible to people who just wouldn't physically be able to operate something like a Wii or DS. It makes gaming accessible to people who might be confined to electronic wheelchairs and unable to move their hands the necessary ways to hold a controller, or to people who might be missing fingers or either of their hands.