Not just the expense, the logistics of putting all of the lines cohesively together ultimately shrinks the scope of what could be done.

RPG side content definitely has been cut down when voice over is mandatory.

Would be interesting to see the gamedevs talking about what was intentional and what wasn't.

I'm just a filthy campaign player who only beat brutal and 100%'d all four SC2 campaigns, so bearing that in mind for BW:

1. Zerg can still build multiple units simultaneously whereas Terran and Protoss unit production is still queued even if you select up to 12 buildings at a time.
2. Case for > 12 units:
- Massing units for aggregate movements is much easier; F2-A doesn't win games compared to fighting smaller skirmishes with control groups to exert map control.
- You still have to master intelligent control groups like separating your attackers and spellcasters and you still have to individually control your spellcasters since there are no benefits to stacking spells with multiple spellcasters.
- The only unit of concern would be mutalisks, but that was originally solved by auto-dispersing them when mutas are in their own control group before the trick was discovered.
- Lastly, do you think the game would be better if you only controlled a max of 10, 8, or even 6 units in each control group? I'm happy to be proved wrong here.

If QOL makes the game more streamlined / easier so I can focus on other pressing tasks like micro and macroing, winning is better based on strategy than on mechanical skills. I'm still salty about Korean BW eSports players for preserving BW in its state even though they turned out to be right, though Blizzard-Activision is now an empty corporate shell of its former self before WoW. Very reasonable. I can definitely understand customizing names. If the game has no option for that, then aside from budget, no reason why it shouldn't be in there. As for the budget, gamedevs can easily cut bloat on the script or only use it in cutscenes. If the visuals or music isn't enough to set the tone, voices are another toolkit for immersion. For Zodiarcs, the visuals were nonexistent and the music wasn't enough to set the tone of certain scenes, so that's why voices would've worked well here.

+1 to the other ideas so far, very reasonable. Keep it up!

Adding control remapping is not always that simple, especially if the game was not originally developed with it in mind.

Here's a talk from GAConf 2020 about controller remapping in Destiny 2, to give you an idea of what's involved here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1PDqhD22BA


What about games that consist entirely of menus or cutscenes?

Reminds me of how, in Celeste's most recent update, the game allows you to map a button or key to what's known as a "demodash", something that involved using external remapping software (IIRC), and which was allowed in some speedrun categories.

Also, sometimes, if something is too hard to implement, there might still be an alternative. For example, VVVVVV doesn't have key remapping, but it does have:
* Only a few actions that need to be done in real-time (left, right, flip); for anything else, there's plenty of time to reach for the key you need (for example, checking the map, saving, or talking to someone)
* Multiple sets of keys that can be used for those real-time actions (you can use arrow keys, I think some of WASD might work, and so on).

And then there's Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song, in which:
* The game is almost entirely side content
* Despite that, *every* line is voice-acted, and there's even English voice acting in the English version
* All this for an entry in a series that isn't popular in the west (and was especially unpopular because the previous entry was Unlimited SaGa, a game that doesn't hold the player's hand but should have, at least at first).

I just remembered another issue with voice acting:
* Sometimes, the voice acting of a game mispronounces certain words. For examples of what I consider mispronounciations, there's "Cecil" from Final Fantasy 4 DS (a remake that added voice acting, but took out the ability to rename your characters that was originally present), and "Crystalis" from Crystalis GBC (which added low-fi voices for when you get a new sword, though there's other issues with that version).

Same here. I feel that the modern habit of voice acting all dialogues will severely either increase the productions costs, and/or restrict how much dialogue there can be in the game.

I wonder how e.g. a text-heavy RPG like Planescape Torment would be, if they had tried to voice-act all of its dialogue? Currently only certain key things are voice acted, most dialogue seems to be only text.

But maybe modern gamers are too accustomed to the modern way, and to them the "Nintendo 64 way" where the characters mumble something unintelligible with text saying what they actually say, would seem too odd.


One thing that I do expect from my RPGs nowadays is a clear quest log which clearly tells what quests are still unfinished. This helps a lot to track where you should possibly go next etc., especially if you have been away from the game for awhile.

E.g. the Infinity-engine RPGs are a bit hit and miss in this regard. Of the ones I've played (of the classic versions, not the Enhanced Editions), Baldur's Gate 2 and Planescape Torment seem to have such proper quest logs, while the rest (Icewind Dale 1-2, Baldur's Gate 1... are there any others?) don't, but you have to peruse through all your journal logs, trying to figure out what quests and tasks you have possibly already finished.

I recall while playing e.g. Betrayal At Krondor, thinking how it is otherwise near perfect RPG... if it wasn't for a lack of quest log, or even a journal system like in Baldur's Gate. I kept writing BaK subquests to a piece of paper and marking which of them I had already finished, and of course at some point I lost that piece of paper...

Mostly RPGs:

Skippable cutscenes are a must. If I replay a 50+ hour game, don't make me sit through hours of cutscenes again, that's just inhumane.

Let me reskill my characters.

FPS:

A weapon wheel, not as much of a problem if you play on PC (just press 1-9), but I don't want to press left on the D-Pad 5 times to select my shotgun and press right a few times to select my minigun.

Holding a button to quickly change between the last two equipped guns, it makes combat much more fluid without all the times you having to change your weapons in the weapon wheel/ loadout screen etc.

I'm reminded of Baldur's Gate 2 here, where the less important dialog isn't voice acted, but a voice acted line will play when you talk to that character. Only problem, however, is that the voice acted line can be at odds with the actual text. For example:
Voice: Hello! Nice to see you!
Text: Please leave me alone.
(I actually remember this happening here.)

I find that this is less important if the game is linear without side-quests, or if the game is as simple as the original Dragon Quest.

Then again, there's a few early games that have this sort of thing. Might and Magic 3, I believe, introduced a quest log. SaGa 2 (Final Fantasy Legend 2) has a Memo feature that stores what people have told you. (Yes, even the original SaGa 2, on the Game Boy, has this feature.) Dragon Quest 6 (SFC) and Dragon Quest 3 remake (SFC/GBC) have a series of spells that allow you to memorize a conversation and recall it later; sadly this feature was dropped in later versions of said games. (Both DQ6 and DQ3r have one specific spot where this feature is particularly handy.)

If the game has to have cutscenes, agreed.

With that said, I'd actually prefer my RPGs to *not* have cutscenes in the first place.

Also, this feature should apply to non-RPGs that have cutscenes. (Ninja Gaiden 1-3 on the NES had the right idea here.)

- Support for keyboard and mouse input, fully re-bindable
- Mouselook (in 3d games)
- High resolution textures, although with the download chunked so people don't have to download them.
- Option to have all voices subtitled
- Ability to skip cutscenes once you have watched them the first time, but must require holding down a key or pressing two keys for a period of time to prevent accidental skipping
- Ability to re-watch cutscenes later
- In longer games, I also like to be able to access a "story to date" piece that summarises the plot to today.
- Multiple save slots, ability to save anywhere, any time (within reason). I don't want my only save to be a quicksave.

I don't give leniency to indies; these aren't that expensive to implement.

Ability to turn off the modern day effects in games, why is everything just a mass of blurred swirling colours and effects?
Ability to swap between controller and keyboard mouse at will, GTA for instance, I play 80% with controller (and always driving), but when it comes to aiming you simply cannot beat a mouse.
I once disliked a lot a lot of new features, like auto map and markers as they take away the exploration. Time however is now against me, and I just can’t invest 20 hours searching the barren wastelands for that last sliver of silver sword.

High resolution textures can be hard to implement, as it requires more work from the artists. Furthermore, they are completely inappropriate for games that are intended to have a more retro look; I can't see them working in a game like Shovel Knight, for example.

This should be the default.

Apparently, telemetry has shown that users are 60% likely to turn the option on if it defaults to off, and something like 90% to leave it on if it defaults to on; this suggests that subtitles should be the default.

(Of course, this only applies to games that have voices; not every game needs them.)

I agree regarding "retro look" games, but assumed people would read between the lines.

Regarding more work from the artists, I'd disagree with that. Most of the time, textures are produced at a higher resolution and then compressed (obviously excluding for retro look games). Either way, anything running on a 3d texture mapped engine that's not deliberately going for a retro look (or to head off pedantry - a "clean" look), these days I expect the option for high resolution textures. As things don't come on DVDs anymore, and storage/transmission is very cheap, there's no real reason not to.

They did, otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned it.

Nah, ideally you can win the game with everything. Winning in early game obviously favors micro, lategame favors macro but still has places where micro can matter a lot. The strategy plays a role in every part of the game. BW was basically the perfect game before Blizzard played the largest part in killing the professional scene. The good part is that I had some awesome years watching it, the bad part is that I wanted way more.

*shudder* No way. As a standard, mouse is for menus (unless you just have a few options, like in the old and old-style games you prefer, in which case keyboard can indeed work better), looking in case of first person and third person views, moving screen or map, scrolling text and default and maybe secondary action, with possibility to bind additional buttons to other things, keyboard for hotkeys and in case of first person, third person and side view also movement.
Well, I like to know, and won't use clients for external tracking, plus that those would count the total time spent with the game running, not just actual playtime.
Indeed, rebinding controls also needs to be up there on the list, most preferably with two controls for each function (or even three if they care to), so you can have mouse and keyboard or right and left side of keyboard for some, for quick access depending on what feels better in the heat of the action. And yes, accept any keys/buttons, no oh you can't bind this to mouse or can't use shift/ctrl/alt or whatever.
This too.
And this...
Indeed. Text is mandatory, voices optional, and better do without if you can't do them well or they take away resources needed for other aspects.

One other feature that I'd like to see more is the ability to jump to parts of the game you already played.

Startropics (NES) did this; the game is divided into chapters, and if you choose "RETRY" on the title screen (I think that's what it was called), you could start ay any chapter you've reached. The catch is that you can't save (particularly annoying for Chapter 3), and you can't earn any points.

Celeste also does this, but goes further; you can return to any major mid-level check point as well as the start of the level, and you can use this feature to pick up berries and any other collectibles that you missed (and the game does save when you do this).

Except that:
* Not every computer has a physical mouse; some just have a track pad, which is not nearly as comfortablt to use. In such situations, I would prefer to use keyboard for things like menu navigation.
* Connecting a mouse requires a flat surface, so it won't work well if, say, the computer is being used in bed or on public transportation.
* Even on computers with a mouse, switching between keyboard and mouse is annoying.
* There's also an accesibility issue with requiring mouse input; some people have hand tremors or other conditions that make precise mouse use not so easy.

In particular, one of the problems I had with Baldur's Gate and the other IE games is that the only way to move is to use the mouse, clicking on the destination; this is an issue because, aside from what I mentioned above, it forces reliance on the game's pathfinding algorithm rather than direct control. By contrast, Ultima 6 lets you control your party directly with the keyboard, and it lacks that issue entirely.

Thanks for explaining this. The complexity may be much higher in Keyboard + Mouse combination then.
That's why we're paying them though, aren't we? :P

In this case, the game is made of cutscenes and menus. I guess it's totally different, as the gameplay is focused on clicks or menu options. (Visual Novels, clickers, puzzle adventures.)

But one could argue that even in those games, interruptions to the flow of the gameplay in their genre can be annoying.

Examples: In a Visual Novel where you don't chat much; where you can't participate in the scene, just read, for longs periods of time. In this case, it might be preferable to some people to just read manga, a book, etc.

In a puzzle genre like Match-3, the menu and UI can still be organised and appealing.

Celeste is a gem indeed in the examples we're discussing here. I haven't played it myself, but a friend of mine did (He's completing it all... guy is almost addicted to the challenges haha.)

What I believe to be necessary in this topic (key remapping) is player/user confort.
I have another friend that when playing TPS's or FPS's use the RMB to jump, while many people use RMB to Aim, and Space to Jump. His control scheme is totally different.

Some games use the style of configuration that the developer think would be best, but "best" is subjective.