What game mechanics have ticked you off or really impressed you to the point where you think all developers should take note of how they work?

I was thinking of Oblivion's attempt to scale monster levels with your level, and Civ 4: Colonization's attempt to scale the king's expeditionary force (which you have to defeat to become an independent country) to your liberty bell production (and hence colony size). On paper maybe scaling things sounds like a good idea to keep the game challenging even when the player is doing really well, but the trouble is that it can make things futile, or worse, harmful. In Oblivion, if you don't increase your combat skills and attributes at the same rate per level that the enemies do when they scale, then the enemies become increasingly better than you every time you level! In C4C larger colonies are inherently less profitable because you'll decrease the selling price of goods faster and provoke more tax increases, so it's harder for larger colonies to keep up with the amount of scaling of the royal expeditionary force. So getting a bigger colony makes it harder for you to win!

Once you have this kind of mechanic, ridiculous things start to happen. In vanilla Oblivion, the game is actually easier to beat as a level 1 by deliberately picking major skills you won't use and only increasing your minor skills so you won't level and won't face hordes of bandits dressed in glass armor. In C4C, you can win easily on the hardest difficulty in less than 50 turns by deliberately keeping your colony puny until you begin your revolution so you only have to defeat a tiny force.

So developers, have a good long hard think about the unintended consequences of scaling things to keep up with the player, and do it with subtlety or not at all.

On the good side, I'd point to Company of Heroes and its terrain cover, especially directional cover like walls. Trees, walls, craters and so on all provide various amounts of cover for infantry, allowing them to take less hits when fired at. However, walls don't provide cover from the back and sides, so flanking enemy infantry positioned behind walls is much more rewarding than charging at them from the front. Also, enemy fire, and especially enemy MG fire will suppress infantry, causing them to hit the deck and crawl, leaving them slow and vulnerable.

It adds so much rewarding tactical depth when you can try to anticipate your enemy's movements to catch them in a position where you have better cover than them, and you often can't just group your infantry and throw them at the enemy, because a single MG could pin the whole group down. However, if you split them and flank that MG and infantry hiding behind that wall, things could go very badly for your enemy instead. Yay, tactics!

It's not perfectly developed in Company of Heroes, because big blobs of group selected infantry charging in can still win far too often. But all it needs is more RTS developers to pay attention to how rewarding the tactics introduced by that kind of mechanism can be and refine it.

Destructible environments and overly complex HUDs. Nothing breaks the immersion like lots of text all over your screen followed by shooting a wooden shack with a rocket and having it survive unscathed.

Company of Heroes is a fantastic RTS, the things you mentioned are what make many other RTS games like Command & Conquer (post RA2) feel really dated. COH is one of the few RTS games that truely makes a map a real battlefield rather than just a flat surface.

meatloaf231:
Destructible environments

It's one of those fads that the industry loves getting into. Games that become hits (like COD4) end up having some sort of new introduction (or bring and idea into the mainstream market, like Gears). Devs then copy this idea, but don't implement it as well as the original developers.

As for me, it's those damn vehicle sections in FPSs. Yes, Halo had vehicle sections, and yes, people loved Halo, but that's no reason to put vehicle sections in all games. Gah, I can't play a shooter these days without vehicle sections.

Zelda: OoT and beyond proves you don't need an overly complex control scheme to allow a character to do plenty of neat tricks.

The destructible enviroments in COH really do affect the gameplay unlike other games, if that enemy squad is using that stone wall as cover. I'm gonna blow it apart with a hand grenade from my rifle squad.

There is even times you can blow things apart and use debrise as cover. Or perhap clear that fence or bushes to flank an enemy and so on.

meatloaf231:
overly complex HUDs.

GAH! MMO's suffer so much from this. I tried playing an MMO on my T.V. - I had to stand in front of the damn thing to see what was going on.

If you are going to do a cover system do it right. Take dark sector, cover system but you cant blind fire....whaaa? And please if you have guns in your game dont make me shoot people 100 times to kill people. And lastly make sure the guns are accurate enough that they shoot where i aim....lookin at you Kane and Lynch

halo did vehicles right, everyone else made them clunky cardboard boxes with tanerite attached to them.

Another thought:

CoH is the only RTS I know of where using cover is tactically important. But there are plenty of FPS games where using cover tactically is important to the gameplay. So the genre of musclebound gun-toting lunkheads is more intelligent about cover tactics that the RTS genre! How ironic.

I believe grenades need to be rethought. In my opinion, they need to make more granades like COD4's. A grenade is meant to kill, not to slightly wound (I'm looking at you Halo 3).

CmdrGoob:
Another thought:

CoH is the only RTS I know of where using cover is tactically important. But there are plenty of FPS games where using cover tactically is important to the gameplay. So the genre of musclebound gun-toting lunkheads is more intelligent about cover tactics that the RTS genre! How ironic.

Or maybe cover systems just aren't feasible in large scale RTS games. Dawn of War, Warcraft III, Sup Com. going all the way back to Total Annihilation. They didn't have "cover systems" per-SE, but TERRAIN did matter. High ground, vs. low ground. Forested or cratered area vs open ground. In an RTS with such large scale battles and units, it makes more sense to deal in bigger areas and effects. CoH was able to implement the system because of it's smaller groups and close up management. That doesn't mean cover tactics weren't used before it.

As for what I think every game should have. Lightsabers.
Yes, Lightsabers. It's the most enjoyable part of Halo and I have to admit I would play CoD:4 every freakin day if it had lightsabers in it.

ObnoxiousTwat:
I believe grenades need to be rethought. In my opinion, they need to make more granades like COD4's. A grenade is meant to kill, not to slightly wound (I'm looking at you Halo 3).

First, you must abandon multilayer.

fluffylandmine:
halo did vehicles right, everyone else made them clunky cardboard boxes with tanerite attached to them.

Like...GASP! The Warthog?

Replayable Chapters menu. There is simply no game where its not a good thing, and it is unnacceptable for it to not be in such deeply awesome games as the MGS and GTA Series

ObnoxiousTwat:
I believe grenades need to be rethought. In my opinion, they need to make more granades like COD4's. A grenade is meant to kill, not to slightly wound (I'm looking at you Halo 3).

You must take into account a spartan's/elite's SHIELDS. Without these pieces of technology, grenades become lethal (albeit still very close range)

Aries_Split:

fluffylandmine:
halo did vehicles right, everyone else made them clunky cardboard boxes with tanerite attached to them.

Like...GASP! The Warthog?

Even though they fishtail like HELL, they're still way better handling than, say, anything from crysis. Once you get used to the fishtail, the warthog is extremely easy to maneuver.

ObnoxiousTwat:
I believe grenades need to be rethought. In my opinion, they need to make more granades like COD4's. A grenade is meant to kill, not to slightly wound (I'm looking at you Halo 3).

You mean like in Resistance? Blow em up, impale them on 20 centimetre spikes, or simply engulf them in a cloud of fire. Boom, baby.

Imitation Saccharin :

ObnoxiousTwat:
I believe grenades need to be rethought. In my opinion, they need to make more granades like COD4's. A grenade is meant to kill, not to slightly wound (I'm looking at you Halo 3).

First, you must abandon multilayer.

The grenades in COD4 are terrible, insta-kill nades are ok in singleplayer but it MP it really fucks things up. The insta-kill nades, choppers and airstrikes = SPAM!

Use your damn gun to kill people, your grenade should just be a tool not the main focus of death dealing. You can see why so many COD4 players can't shoot or play for shit.

Indigo_Dingo:
Replayable Chapters menu. There is simply no game where its not a good thing, and it is unnacceptable for it to not be in such deeply awesome games as the MGS and GTA Series

Totally agree, GTA needs it really badly.

Just because a platform has additional features (i.e. gimmicks) doesn't mean that you need to use it to make a good game. The DS is a prime example for this (e.g. Dawn of Sorrow).

Codgo:

Imitation Saccharin :

ObnoxiousTwat:
I believe grenades need to be rethought. In my opinion, they need to make more granades like COD4's. A grenade is meant to kill, not to slightly wound (I'm looking at you Halo 3).

First, you must abandon multilayer.

The grenades in COD4 are terrible, insta-kill nades are ok in singleplayer but it MP it really fucks things up. The insta-kill nades, choppers and airstrikes = SPAM!

Use your damn gun to shoot people, your grenade should just be a tool not the main focus of death dealing. You can see why so many COD4 players can't shoot for shit.

And Matyr is one of the cheapest shots available. You're dead, so it can't even benefit you, its just petty revenge cause someones better than you (in case you can't tell, I've had a massive kill streak ended by those a couple of times)

Hack 'n slashers where the slash attack is mapped to the right thumb stick.

Who thought that was a good idea?

Indigo_Dingo:
Replayable Chapters menu. There is simply no game where its not a good thing, and it is unnacceptable for it to not be in such deeply awesome games as the MGS and GTA Series

Yeah, good one.

pieeater911:
Hack 'n slashers where the slash attack is mapped to the right thumb stick.

Who thought that was a good idea?

Hideo Kojima, in his worst and yet somehow best game.

I think the latest Unreal had good vehicles. Nice feel and control, and lot's of possibilities for multiple players to hop on and fire.

That is one thing I would like to really see. Hopping on a vehicle just to hang on and ride. Maybe fire your rifle while doing so. Just needing a faster way to travel to battle.
Unreal kind of had this with hoverboard behind a vehicle.

Bad: Anything involving explosives and helicopters from COD4 - At no point in a shooter should a player be given an absolute ton of kills just by pushing one button and pointing at a map. Likewise, at no point should a player EVER be rewarded for dying.

Good: Party interaction amongst themselves and the main character (Here's looking at you Baldur's Gate <3). This is something that has been sadly absent from RPGs for a long time (first one to say Mass Effect gets my boot up their ass. I take no responsibility for my verbal beat downs relating to that game).

stompy:

meatloaf231:
Destructible environments

It's one of those fads that the industry loves getting into. Games that become hits (like COD4) end up having some sort of new introduction (or bring and idea into the mainstream market, like Gears). Devs then copy this idea, but don't implement it as well as the original developers.

Just for the record, COD4 wasn't the first game with destructible environments. As far as i know, it was Red Faction. Though admitedly, it wasn't that great in that game, (it was rarely tactically important) that is where it began, far before COD4.

ObnoxiousTwat:
I believe grenades need to be rethought. In my opinion, they need to make more granades like COD4's. A grenade is meant to kill, not to slightly wound (I'm looking at you Halo 3).

I wasn't a big fan of the grenades in COD4, however I loved the grenades in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. They were powerful (like a real grenade), had an actual serious blast radius (again like a real grenade), but in order to balance them game-wise and not make them overpowered, you were limited by the amount you could carry and the time it took to deploy them. I loved it.

pieeater911:
Hack 'n slashers where the slash attack is mapped to the right thumb stick.

Who thought that was a good idea?

Hey, once you get used to it it feels pretty natural.

Mr. Moose:

pieeater911:
Hack 'n slashers where the slash attack is mapped to the right thumb stick.

Who thought that was a good idea?

Hey, once you get used to it it feels pretty natural.

How does it have an actual advantage over the use of buttons for control?

Indigo_Dingo:
And Matyr is one of the cheapest shots available. You're dead, so it can't even benefit you, its just petty revenge cause someones better than you (in case you can't tell, I've had a massive kill streak ended by those a couple of times)

Ah, CoD4's martyrdom. Nothing says "I refuse to be careful" more than getting killed by it.

I also disagree with the OP's complaint about level scaling, especially because level scaling is in almost every wRPG.
Oblivion just has it a bit more noticeable, and punishes you for completely messing up a character, because unless you take two or three attack skills as major, or switch weapon class half-way through the game, you will be able to survive every encounter.(If Oblivion was a jRPG, you would be able to outlevel everything which makes the game worse than what we currently have)

Party interaction amongst themselves and the main character (Here's looking at you Baldur's Gate <3). This is something that has been sadly absent from RPGs for a long time (first one to say Mass Effect gets my boot up their ass. I take no responsibility for my verbal beat downs relating to that game).

Knights of the Old Republic?
Both games had a decent interaction system, but failed when the choices had no real effect on the game.

Mass Effect had party interaction?

Scaling difficulty was always and will always be the worst thing you could do in any game.
We all know that. It's just that some other developers didn't beleive us and wanted to try it for themselves.

For those ones complaining in oblivion, may I suggest anything that paralyzes the enemy? Thank you.

Good mechanics: Uncertainty. As seen in Call of Cthulhu - Dark Corners of the Earth, fear is one of the main motivations either to survive or to just duck in a corner fearing for your life, while you try to recover yourself from that horrible vision. The blurry vision is, in my opinion, awesome. However, it can go off hand (Hi, Dagon, this is me trying to save this boat whilst EVERYTHING causes me to get mad and commit suicide). It's cool, but hey, under control.

Bad mechanics: Ulimited things. As seen in Fable, game in which everyone ended with about 200 bazillion XP's after spending about 10 minutes in the cementery (just surviving, not going for xp's) and having a 200 combo and some xp potions.

Mass Effect had party interaction?

(Slightly paraphrased from my memory)
Wrex: So, if you and Shepherd were to fight, which one of you do you think would win?
Kaiden: Wha? Commander Shepherd is my commanding officer. I can't ever imagine us having a fight.
Wrex: Hmph. That's why (s)he's the Commander and why (s)he would win.

Kaiden: I gotta say Wrex, you're not quite what I imagined the Krogan to be like.
Wrex: Hmph. Because humans have a vastly diverse set of beliefs and cultural aspects, but all us Krogan are the same?
Kaiden: I...I didn't mean...Look, just forget I said anything.
Wrex: Done.

kanada514:
Scaling difficulty was always and will always be the worst thing you could do in any game.
We all know that. It's just that some other developers didn't beleive us and wanted to try it for themselves.

You mean independantly scaling difficulty on a curve that the devs made for themselves right?

If so, I agree with you.

Sniper rifles in multiplayer = make it so that you kill people with 2 hits or one headshot. Snipers already have so many advantages that they don't need one-shot-one-kill weapons.