What does it take for a perfect game ?
What would be your perfect game and how would you design it? Or even to surpass a game class. A playable virtuality or interactive movie.
What would be prefered gameplay mechanics and style, graphics, in-game physics, characterization, story...
What would be prefered gameplay mechanics and style, graphics, in-game physics, characterization, story...
Post edited by brus on
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And of course it should be singleplayer only. I'm highly allergic towards MMO's. Not to mention dealing with players in a virtual reality never goes well if novels on this subject are to be trusted.
Preferable, it should come with hardware that *doesn't* fry one's brain. Having a dozen of ways to log-out wouldn't hurt either.
I need several days to think so that I could answer this question.
But I would like a lot a game like @Kamigoroshi told, maybe just not Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy but sci-fi or fantasy like Lord of the Rings or BG.
To be more realistic I would like also something like BG2, but with the best possible modern graphics (for ordinary home computers), option for both isometric 2d and poligonal 3d, with a super AI, at the level that modern computers can handle, using different tactics at each reload. And with a really friendly modding interface that let's a not modder write a quest in an evening, so the game is mainly an engine and the real plots and battles can be easily created and shared between the players community allowing to play the regolar plot + mod quests or even total conversions.
I like both Baldur's Gate's and League of Legends' gameplay (and Skyrim's) but there's no way you could mix those (anyway: it has to be real-time. I don't like turn-based combat save for roguelikes and a bunch of actually good turn-based games), or if you manage to, that everyone would like that. I also like competitive multiplayer besides having a great single-player game. Also, it has to be modder friendly (at least like BG... Not like Pillars of Eternity or MOBAs).
I think it's a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. You can have all the right parts present and still not have that mysterious emergence of a subjectively perfect game. So, who knows?
Let's start with an example, lot of people use spreadsheets, because is easy and quick to use them and to learn how to do it, few people write programs to accomplish the same things, because is time consuming and require more knowledge. In the past spreadsheets didn't exist and people had to learn basic or an other language and write his own programs or pay a programmer to do it, if a commercial program able to perform that specific thing didn't exist.
Imo in adding content to games we are in that early stage, is possible to add new quests or different scripts enhancing the AI or create new NPCs. But is possible only for people with a specific knowledge and even for them is time consuming.
A friendly modding interface, with libraries of scripts, facilities to create new ones without working at script level (but the possibility to do it), facilities to create new areas or edit existing ones, to create new plots and quests, in an easy and quick way is what I need. Something that make the modding easy and quick like configuring a spreadsheet opposite to write a program. Or using EEkeeper instead of editing the saves at hex level.
Now the games have a lot of players, many experienced players and only few modders. With that easy and effective modding interface more experienced players could become modders, could add new content to the game. The number of modders would be much larger and their work much more effective (less time consuming), since they could use automated functions from the interface, libraries of scripts and so on.
AFAIK there had been 3 total conversions of the original BG2 (total conversion is using the engine to create a new plot) and no one of them was completed. And there are many quest mods, but their number is limited, they are too much to be played in a single run, but very few if you want to change and have new content at each run.
With that tool and a large modder community would be possible at each run to choose many never played quests or even total conversions, giving a completely different experience to the players that play a game more than few times. A large modder community would create an amount of new contents that a developer can only dream about.
I am pretty happy of how I can play BG2 in many different ways, RP or PWG, different parties, quest order and different tactics in each battle, a little less happy in ToB that is more linear, and I don't think that PST would change much. I can change as player each run, the game is always the same.
I don't know if some developers can be interested in investing money in developing a game with such interface. I am convinced that Bioware and now Beamdog did benefit of the (free) work of the modders, I doubt that without Weimer and his Weidu and all the mods out there the BG saga would have last 20 years and still be played, and sold, nowadays. A game with such interface would bring the thing at a new level where the players and not the modders add and share new content.
Because player preferences differ so dramatically, the perfect game would be individualized. No one company can make a game adapt to the player's desires completely. The solution?
Mods. Fan-made mods can add in and tweak content to suit almost every player's preferences. The perfect game would be easily modified and come with a wide variety of options.
Alternately, strategies used by the party would be prepared for by subsequent encounters such that if a group used primarily fire based attacks, the enemy would employ fire defense or creatures that weren't bothered by fire. This would require that the players adapt to circumstances and allow the game to adapt to the player's circumstance. So instead of each "zone" being pretty much the same every time you did a "play through", they would change and alter in unanticipated ways.
Finally, the 'Big Bad' would redeploy "Units" in ways to foil or confound the player, reinforcing some areas while leaving 'Lesser targets' weaker.
I think it could be done. Certainly some of the AI style programming that goes into a game like Galactic Civilization 3 would allow some of that type of thing.
And I would REALLY like it if the game would employ a Z Axis. So many isometric games these days may have contours and the appearance of a third dimension but few do. While I get that including levitate and fly and featherfall (just to name a few spells) adds an extra element to the game, it IS something that PnP used to offer. CRPGs should as well.
Beyond that, make the story good with loads of twists and turns. Make the player choices more robust than simply "The good choice" or "The bad choice", and make "The evil choice" something more subtle and original than "Bratty Temper tantrum".
But the games amused me since I was 12 years old had such things like replayability(I made up a word, srry) and made me curious about what will happen next, what will I get and what should I do in order to solve puzzles during gameplay.
If a modding interface as I suggested is implemented in a game, and there is no technical impediment in doing it.
What will happen next, what will be got and what should the player do in order to solve puzzles could be different during each gameplay because a whole community of players and not only few experienced modders could create and share new content in an easy and quick way.
Super Mario Bros. comes close. But the water levels ruin it.
No I wasn't referring to him/her because I wasn't referring to anyone.
If we are looking for games that in subjective view did meet that level, Metroid Zero Mission is it for me.
@jjstraka34 - If you are looking for a side scroller with tons of replayability and loads of fun going back and forth, Metroid Zero Mission is where it is at. It is about the only game that I still play on my DS anymore and it is probably the game that I have logged the most hours in ever...
Still, there are things in both Dark Souls games that could have been done better. I am not saying more to my personal liking or skill level, but objectively better. In both games, there is never a situation where more armor is going to be a better thing than being able to dodge the hit. That is a flaw as it doesn't allow for that particular play style to be fully explored to any success. Dark Souls 2 is bigger but it is quite linear and therefore not as "Open" as Dark Souls 1. Magic in PvP is kind of flawed so anyone truly focusing on that discipline is at a disadvantage against other players.
In short there are areas that could have been done better but weren't. I admit that it is a phenomenal game and one of my all time favorites. I am just saying that it isn't as perfect as some might have you think.
In my estimation, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Tetris, The Secret of Monkey Island, and Dark Souls come closest.
1. Presentation, which includes graphics and audio. They don't have to be stunning, but they have to be functional at the very least. Depending on subgenre, most players expect that a first person type of game or simulator has good looking graphics and sounds. More artistic games don't necessarily need Star Wars - budget graphics.
2. Music... and atmosphere. Of course, the aforementioned graphics and audio contribute to the atmosphere of the game. Good soundtrack can make or break the atmosphere, but the way I see it, it's also about countless of other things.
3. Learning curve and challenge. I think that a good game is easy to learn but hard to master. Tutorials are a good way to teach new players, but they should be entertaining to veteran players or optional.
4. The focus. It's good to remember that even a "perfect" game can't indeed please everyone. A game that tries to accomplish everything may also fail in everything. For example, a game that is clearly meant to be a multiplayer game doesn't necessarily benefit from a singleplayer mode and vice versa. Especially with limited development time and resources, it might be better to focus on what your game does best.
5. The ease of modding is a good point. There aren't many negative points to modding, really. However, especially multiplayer games should be designed so that installing mods isn't a requirement to join a specific server, and that mods can't be used to gain an unfair advantage over other players.
6. Close relative to modding, player avatar/vehicle/profile/christmas stocking customization is a very good thing to have. Of course, some specific genres simply don't need this.
7. Replayability. A PvP game has potentially tons of replayability, since no two multiplayer matches are the same. For singleplayer games, modding, alternate ways of completing the game, hidden things and REASONABLY priced dlcs add to replayability. Imho a cheap game doesn't necessarily need replayability to be a good game.
These are requirements of a good game, just from the top of my head. I imagine that a perfect game meets most of these requirements in some way... and gives something unique that makes it stand out from (most) other games. I'd say that the new Elite is a good game, at least if you like space games. Unfortunately, it's not perfect, because it has the requirement of being always online, even when it would work better as a singleplayer game. As I see it, players don't even have the option of playing offline, even if they can opt out of encountering other players. For those who this is simply a non-issue, it can indeed be a perfect game.