Every now and then, a game comes along that has a feature that is so obvious and intuitive, it's hard to imagine doing without it. It even ruins old games that never had this now essential feature and you sometimes catch yourself trying to use it in games that don't sport it. You must have a very good reason not use such a feature as when they're missing, it's painfully obvious.

Some good examples include the draggable selection box, hotkeys for groups, and the minimap when it comes to the RTS genre. It's hard to imagine a rhythm game without star power/overdrive or some equivalent. A rather general one that may be evolving is achievements (this will be more essential to those newer to gaming and accustomed to them).

There are some personal ones I'd like to hope get adopted as a standard for their genre. One is Supreme Commander's seamless zooming in and out of the battlefield- something I'd hope to see in Starcraft 2, but I'm not holding my breath for. Another is the bullet penetration system from Call of Duty 4, which enhanced, refined and practically perfected that feature and is sorely missed in every other FPS I've played since. My personal favourite would be Mass Effect's conversation wheel, which I hope to see shamelessly borrowed.

So what features and game developments would you label as essential? What would you like to see become popular and ingrained into its genre? Is there anything a game's done that has spoilt other games for you?

A machete (from Far Cry 2). Every game should have one, or a crowbar atleast.

Oh and V.A.T.S. I played Cod 5 online and kept dieing trying to pull that damn thing up. Fallout has ruined my gaming life...

Reflex melee attacks. After playing Halo, having to switch to a melee option to punch/stab something in other games is practically unthinkable. Even in COD4 where you click the thumbstick is almost too fiddly.

Kermi:
Reflex melee attacks. After playing Halo, having to switch to a melee option to punch/stab something in other games is practically unthinkable. Even in COD4 where you click the thumbstick is almost too fiddly.

Agreed. CoD4 on PC did work, as knife attack was mapped to a special key. Brilliant as you could stab a person and follow up with a couple of M16 kills. Even in CS, with quick selection turned on, you have to select the weapon and press the fire key. As Kermi says, allows for awesome twitch reflexes which can give you the edge... plus it feels awesome.

Kermi:
Reflex melee attacks. After playing Halo, having to switch to a melee option to punch/stab something in other games is practically unthinkable. Even in COD4 where you click the thumbstick is almost too fiddly.

Yeah, those are great.

You can switch the button layout of the controller to make the b button melee.

Kukul:

DanDanikov:
My personal favourite would be Mass Effect's conversation wheel, which I hope to see shamelessly borrowed.

That was the worst thing to ever happened to RPGs. It totally killed the dialogue system. Not beign able to say what you want was a nightmare.
Sorry I cannot express how this sentence made me mad.

how exactly did the conversation wheel limit conversation more than other RPGs? Instead of a simple yes, no and neutral, you got tons of options to get more information before settling on yes, no, neutral, and it also pointed out other options based on your paragon/renegade score. It even showed you what those options were even if your score wasn't high enough.

RPG's need easy accessible maps, like press b to map

A number of developments in controls are such that you can't really go back to the old ones and be happy. Vertical mouse look, for one.

(Single player) In a game that utilizes checkpoints / perma-death / etc instead of a standard issue save/load system, you should still be able to quit the game and continue later.

Inside the game systems I don't think there are many features at all that would always be right for an entire genre.

A wrench from Bioshock

Kermi:
Reflex melee attacks. After playing Halo, having to switch to a melee option to punch/stab something in other games is practically unthinkable. Even in COD4 where you click the thumbstick is almost too fiddly.

I'll have to agree with you there- I've been playing a lot of Left 4 Dead and I right click madly in other games expecting reflex melee.

Kukul:

DanDanikov:
My personal favourite would be Mass Effect's conversation wheel, which I hope to see shamelessly borrowed.

That was the worst thing to ever happened to RPGs. It totally killed the dialogue system. Not beign able to say what you want was a nightmare.
Sorry I cannot express how this sentence made me mad.

I found it streamlines conversations immensely. The fact the the same types of choices appear in the same places makes it quite intuitive, while the short descriptions always succinctly summed up what was subsequently said. You've never been able to say exactly what you want- it's always been a set list of choices. Bioware simply added a degree of consistency to the offered choices while making choosing one quick and easy.

It was also well suited to the thumbstick, although Left 4 Dead's rosetta system suggests to me something similar works just fine on PCs.

In older games where the player dialogue wasn't spoken, I can see how the full text was more appropriate, but with everyone fully vocalised, the convo-wheel allows the exchanges to flow smoothly and potentially without any pause or break. Old school conversations would be like forced closed captions as you'd only hear the choice echoed back to you. I reckon it could still go a bit further- I recall Bioware showing off being able to interrupt NPCs, which didn't seem to make it into the final cut. Taking the idea of flow even further, it would have been nice to have seen some kind of idle pondering, perhaps conversations with time pressure that could be chosen for you if you weren't fast enough. There's potential to do even more with it than has been done.

a feature tokill

Vibrator.

Kukul:

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It sucked because it was way too simple. You didn't even have to look a the text, you just kept on clicking the upper option for paragon option and lower one for the renegade. There was no challange in that. None of that subtelty in KOTOR where you had to ask the right question, no matter what you clicked it pushed the conversation forward. None of that incertainty what the reaction to your line will be. Just a dumbed down dialogue tree for consoletards. Also knowing my exact line when I choose it is way better and immersive. It feels like you've said it yourself. It's especially important for the crucial lines such as "I am the Dark Lord" etc.

Kukul, you might be interested in an indie game titled Façade where all your conversation choices are typed in naturally, which the game is quite adept at processing and reacting to. While certainly rather innovative, it's not something that has been largely adopted, possibly due to the complexity behind such processing of input as well as the potential flaws and 'I don't understand what you're saying'. Mainstream gaming has gone the way of Hollywood so I doubt dialogue will stop being scripted for a long time, but perhaps Façade is a peek at how things may be one day.

Also, it seems like you may have made missed some depth with Mass Effect, as I seem to recall a fair few conversations that benefited from a mixed application of paragon and renegade approaches. Mindlessly selecting renegade options on more than one occasion will cut you off from various sidequests and conversations, and I suspect it also does not result in maximum renegade points. I do blame Bioware for skewing players to always decide either one way or another, both through offering buffs for having high Paragon/Renegade and giving achievements for getting 75% of the available points in either direction. Mass Effect's dialogue truely comes alive when some thought is put into when to apply a paragon or renegade attitude, as well as your timing in doing so, rather than artificially playing purely toward one of them.

I think that Call of Duty got the melee attack just right...it's fiddly enough that you can't spam it like in Halo, but easy enough that twitch reflexes still work somewhat.

I also really liked the conversation wheel...it made sure you knew what kind of statement you were making. Plus, I kind of liked not knowing exactly what you were going to say, but rather just the gist of it. (Then again, I played more of a balanced character, and chose whatever the hell I felt like instead of min-maxing.)
Also, the fact that the options popped up a second or two before the current speaker finished allowed for a more seamless conversation as opposed to the mechanical and unnatural methods of KOTOR, for instance.

For an FPS mechanic, how about the knee-slide from Far Cry 2? (if you crouch while sprinting, you slide for a second) CoD is all right, but I think that would make it a little cooler.

Enemies actually reacting to bullets ripping through their flesh.

After playing some Fallout 3 and being able to put my shotgun in the arm of the Super Mutant who is so dilegently swinging a sledgehammer at me and seeing it sail into the distance as said Super Mutant is left looking around for another sharp bit of metal to hit me with has provided me with immense satisfaction.

Playing Left 4 Dead and having a hoard of zombies slowed down as I am crouching and pumping 9mm rounds into their legs and my buddie is clearing the grouped up crowds to great efficiency with a shotgun has great merit.

When I plug in my older FPS type games, and go about planting round after round into some jerk only to have the only acknowledgement that he even got hit was him finally keel over from the sheer weight of the lead I put in him left me rather upset.

So I can forgive older FPSs, because maybe they didn't know how to do it, or technology at the time was limited. But from now on, you FPS type developers, there is more to it than "head" and "everything else".

Online Multiplayer almost seems like a must, but then again... it's replacing the campaigns.
I'm looking at you, Bungie!!

Draygen:
But from now on, you FPS type developers, there is more to it than "head" and "everything else".

/thread.

VATS.... end of discussion.

Back in the day, I played Quake II, and when I shot guys, the would occasionally struggle back up and fire off a couple last shots before they keeled over. This was immersive. When you shoot someone in real life, they don't fall over. Most of the time, if you shoot someone in the gut a few times, they can still fight just as well as they could before for a few minutes before they start to yield to blood loss. Eventually, I forgot about this, until I played Mafia and shooting victims would occasionally struggle away from the violence, clawing their way across the ground painfully, gripping their injuries. Again, the violence got in my head more. It was realistic. It was less like I was clicking a mouse and destroying obstacles and more like I was pumping bullets into living, breathing human beings, and it got the right feeling of disgust going. Then I played a long line of games where the bad guys just toss out some blood when they get hit and drop to the ground when they're shot, and forgot about it again. Since I played Call of Duty 4 and it combined both of these, other shooters just aren't pulling me in as much. I'm sure this will go away when I play Half-Life 2 Episode 3, though.

Beside that, re-mappable controls. There is no reason for any PC game and almost any console game not to allow this.

I also like configuration "profiles" so that you can save your control setup and somebody else can save another on one copy of the game.

Good morning blues:

[- snip -]

Beside that, re-mappable controls. There is no reason for any PC game and almost any console game not to allow this.

I also like configuration "profiles" so that you can save your control setup and somebody else can save another on one copy of the game.

On that note, that reminds me of Steam Cloud, which seems to me like a must for multiplayer type games from now on. I've yet to see it in action, but the features seem to be spot on.

Re-mappable controls are a no-brainer with modern games and definitely a good essential feature. I've grown annoyed with some recent console games that only offer a few 'layouts' and assume they've thought of all the decent ones. The one that sticks out the most in recent memory is the Mirrors Edge demo, in which there was no way to not have jump and crouch not bound to a shoulder and trigger button. Given how often you use those two buttons, I wanted them on both triggers.

Task-based groups in RTS's? Earth 2140 had a very weak version of this wherein you would select a group of units, hand them off to an AI with a particular purpose in mind (defend here, attack there) and they would stick together all by themselves and do the job.

How about looping commands? TA Spring allows me to have a factory send units to Point A, and them have transports endlessly go back and forth, ferrying them to point B, and allows me to specify the route.

Another Total Annihilation feature is context sensitive guarding and patrolling. A builder on patrol might gather resources, help with projects, and repair damaged units all on the same patrol route. Similiarly, having one unit guard another had it defending, helping out with building, and otherwise following and assisting, depending on the circumstances.

As for spoiling... Morrowind kind of spoiled RPG's for me. I could just wander where I wanted, attack whomever I desire, pick any lock in the game, etc. Kotor felt incredibly rigid when I played it afterwards. Of course the cost of sandbox gaming is that elaborate storytelling gets thrown out the window.

I had been playing wow for some time and was used to linking items & skills to chat for comparison and stuff. When i changed to WAR they didnt have it at start and it was annoying as all hell

DanDanikov:
So what features and game developments would you label as essential?

Customisational Controls.
It's so easy to do. x = whatever. I could program that with my face on fire. It's just lazy.

I didn't play Killzone because it forced leftstick strafe.

I lost that battle and now use Turok controls. Eurgh! Even though I've got mad skills you won't believe how much more game I have in the Goldeneye style.

Meatstorm:
I had been playing wow for some time and was used to linking items & skills to chat for comparison and stuff. When i changed to WAR they didnt have it at start and it was annoying as all hell

Oh, yeah, I know what you mean. I swear EVE does that too (it's been a while) and I don't know about other MMOs, but that really is essential. What'd be really interesting would be to see something that allows them to be linked outside of game, say, in a forum or via IM, or for non-MMOs to sport the same features, eg. an RTS having unit and power cards. Could world well for DoW with the new wargear features.

Veylon:
Another Total Annihilation feature is context sensitive guarding and patrolling. A builder on patrol might gather resources, help with projects, and repair damaged units all on the same patrol route. Similiarly, having one unit guard another had it defending, helping out with building, and otherwise following and assisting, depending on the circumstances.

Supreme Commander had similar features. You could set builders on patrol amongst trees and debris, and they would automatically reclaim them when needed. You could create ferrying routes with transports moving newly produced units to the front line, or a set of waypoints to automatically put them on patrol, as well as setting their default behaviour. You also still had the assist feature.

Even better, treating factories as units works rather well too, for example, allowing you to group them onto a hotkey. SC also lets factories assist each other, so if you order a large set of units, all the factories linked work on it. As is somewhat appropriate to SC's style of having large amounts of units, you can also loop production of the queue.

On the RTS front, I did rather like Company of Heroes cover system, with your troops automatically taking cover where available. While on a few occasions it felt like the odd trooper was doing something dumb, on the whole it worked well to eliminate micro (something I somewhat abhor in larger scale games- a great leader doesn't micro).

Any console game which doesn't allow you to invert the Y-Axis is just stupid.

Besides, I don't know anyone who doesn't play with the Y-Axis inverted.

Kukul:

DanDanikov:
My personal favourite would be Mass Effect's conversation wheel, which I hope to see shamelessly borrowed.

That was the worst thing to ever happened to RPGs. It totally killed the dialogue system. Not beign able to say what you want was a nightmare.
Sorry I cannot express how this sentence made me mad.

Personally I think it improved selectable dialogue hugely. By having the options only be the gist rather than the full sentence it means that these sections don't become boring. It just such annoying aspect of other RPGs, know what your character is about to say can make things extremely tedious.

Mass Effects system ment you got intresting dialogue from the main character while still being able to decide the options.

harhol:

Besides, I don't know anyone who doesn't play with the Y-Axis inverted.

I don't and neither do any of my friends.

Woe Is You:

harhol:

Besides, I don't know anyone who doesn't play with the Y-Axis inverted.

I don't and neither do any of my friends.

I don't know you or any of your friends.

Here's a feature: In Final Fantasy Tactics you could rewatch the cutscenes in case you missed something. Maybe not super important, but considering how much plot most RPG's demand you ingest via cutscenes, it could prove useful.

Space sims shouldn't be so up-the-arse about their auto pilot. Yes, I know that in real life, me, as a captain of some space ship, wouldn't fly it myself, wouldn't shoot the weapons myself and so on. Now, please, let me be stupid enough to fire a high-explosive nuke at (relative) point-blank range and allow me to fly into astroids.

A very good example of this is an incident in Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. In one particular battle, my weapons officer decided that the weapons shouldn't fire, even while I pressed the button in quick (and not so quick, it was a 20 minute battle, so I had all the time to figure that out) succession.

My navigator also figured that the spot my ship was in was THE spot to be, so I couldn't go anywhere.

The most frustrating part, however, is that I WON that battle. Yup, a battle in which I did not contributed a single thing, and I won.

On another notice, I believe that guns are here to stay. Seriously, can you imagine any game without a gun?

Danzorz:
Quick time events!
Just kidding!

For me it's probably time manipulation or shooting while driving

Time manipulation is an essential feature? I hate messing with time, but that's just my opinion.

Anyway I don't know if any rts's are doing much of it but I hope to see techniques to reduce reliance on micromanagement. Such as I think in Starcraft 2 if you command a group of collectors to a group of minerals, they will each go to separate minerals. I hate when you've got a group of units with special ability's that for example freeze people, then you have to click on each one individually and use its ability on each enemy individually.

lets see.....for fps game must have features are as follows: must have a melee button
must have a grenade button with ability to cook it off.
must have either decent cover ala rainbow sixe vegas or a damn fine lean feature like in greg hastings' tournament paintbal.(i swear to the gods that game has the best fps controls ever)
if it has the latter then give me a glance button which lets me quickly look left and right to either side of me with out turning my whole body.
let me go prone. its retarded i cant go prone in some fps games.
for any game: let me remap my controls. no i dont want different configs i want to say button x does action a.
quick map button and make that map mildly transparent so i dont stop and look like a moron as i check it
this one is more of a comandment then a game feature: do not let the single player suffer cause people like to shoot each other in multiplayer. seriously
Alow 4 player co-op on the same screen. seriously developers i know your games are pretty and such but im poor with only one copy of the game. my 360 lets me hook up 4 controllers let me use eh?
rpgs: variable dialogue that i dont care is voiced or not. character creation. seriously i woudl rather play a role i come up with not one you force on me.
for that matter 95% of all games should have character creation! :D
ok im done i guess.