If You Could Change Things In Games...

[Koh]

If you could change some aspects of any game for the better, which game, and what would you change about it?  Feel free to do multiple in one post, or reserve them for separate posts.

Pokemon (the entire series, not just one specific game)
-The first thing I'd change is removing the prompts the games give when you want to use an HM move on an obstacle.  Why does it need to ask you?  The player walks up to the obstacle and presses A with the intention of getting past it, so asking if they want to use Rock Smash on a cracked rock is stupid and a waste of time.

-The next thing is scrapping HMs entirely, as most of them are useless in battle anyway, and just waste valuable move slots.  Instead, put those moves on TMs like every other move, and replace the overworld functionality of them with key item tools that are player activated, like the bike.  For example, the replacement for Rock Smash would be a pickaxe or drill, and the replacement for Cut would be a handaxe or something.

-The games after Gen 2 became incredibly linear, to the point it doesn't even feel like you're on an adventure anymore, but being taken on a tour, because you have no choice on where to go next.  I'd find a way to make the worlds more open like they were in the first two gens (the branching point being Lavender Town in Gen 1, and Ecruteak City and the entirety of Kanto in Gen 2) while still telling the same stories they intend to tell.

-Finally, bumping up the difficulty of the games overall.  They are, and have always been way too easy, to the point it's laughable.  They hype up the gym leaders, champions and elite four and such, but because of how Super Effective works, you're almost guaranteed OHKOs every single time, because it's so OP.  It's really anticlimactic.  Instead of damage being so high, or HP so little, balance it out so the battles play out  more like battles, instead of mostly one sided sweeps.

[Maxpphire]

In Dark Cloud 1, I'd make it that when the weapons break that they don't disappear forever

[psychospacecow]

Dragon Ball Xenoverse

- more content. Just honestly, I want more things to do in that game and more characters.

- not completely broken online. Game is so easy to hack that you find SSJ3 oozaru online.

- less rng. I saw a post yesterday of a guy who was trying to get the full Vegito suit since day 1 and literally JUST got it.

- No more of this "Can never play a key character of a franchise in a series because you got the online day one version instead of the physical one" nonsense. I wanna legit play SSJ4 Vegeta. He's in the game and everything.

[recme]

-Finally, bumping up the difficulty of the games overall.  They are, and have always been way too easy, to the point it's laughable.  They hype up the gym leaders, champions and elite four and such, but because of how Super Effective works, you're almost guaranteed OHKOs every single time, because it's so OP.  It's really anticlimactic.  Instead of damage being so high, or HP so little, balance it out so the battles play out  more like battles, instead of mostly one sided sweeps.

they should try making several versions of a single gym leader for what level your current team is. some pokemon can be added or reduced depending on how strong or weak you are. levels are also included for this change.

i think this concept would only be good for gym leaders/champions/etc. though. if it was applied to wild encounters, then training would be way to easy. either that, or a level cap can be added for wild encounters

[daemoth]

Have you guys tried the hacks of Pokemon? They fix a lot of those problems. For example theres Blaze black and Volt white in which you can catch every single pokemon ever made up to that point ( there are even ways to evolve those that require Trading like Gengar), every pokemon is rebalanced, every battle are made harder, they give you the running shoes and bicycle right at the start. 

Fighting games like Street Fighter:
-Add an easy mode for simpler moves. Never understood why they to be so complex.

[Koh]

Here's a pretty obvious one...any game that uses a password system for saving (or a lack of saving altogether) instead of a battery backup. No one wants to enter long ass passwords every time they want to continue XD.

[puggsoy]

To be honest, while that's a hassle, password saves have their charm. Writing down passwords on paper when you're done, then entering them again the next day and seeing your progress restored.
And for the lack of saving, while frustrating, it does make it that much more satisfying to finish. I remember spending hours with my friend trying to get farther than each other in Kid Chameleon. That actually reminds me that I should try finish it someday...

---

Far Cry 2 has really repetitive quests, each one was basically "go to a place and shoot this thing". Not much strategy or variation. There were some missions where you only had to kill a specific guy, but it was still just "blow up the car he's in" (unless he's in a town, in which case it's "shoot him and get the hell out of there").
At the 80% mark I could swear I'd done the exact same mission like 5 times, only with storyline differences.

Braid just never had enough levels. It has a level editor, sure, but there are only a small handful of mods, and they aren't really as good as the original levels.

I'd really love it if Jamestown had online multiplayer, as opposed to just local. I understand why it isn't an option (any lag would be too serious of an issue in such a game), but it would still be better since I don't really know anybody irl who would want to play it with me.

[Kriven]

It's a small thing, but I'd want to replace Blue Toad from the NSMB games with the revival of Stanley the Bugman, who already wears blue clothes and has a bodyshape similar enough to the plumbers to work out.

[Random Talking Bush]

From one I've played and finished recently, for Sonic Lost World they should've made it so that your shields don't suddenly disappear in mid-level transitions, and to make it so that there are more methods of getting the higher-starred item capsules than just the one-time-only challenges (like randomly on the world map), especially on the PC version (no Wisp Away = no random chance of obtaining 'em). Granted, it's not necessary to use them, it's just a dumb oversight.

That and to make the Speed Shoes not absolutely useless, and fixing Super Sonic's lazy implementation.

[recme]

xenoblade chronicles x would be cooler with real-time 4-player multiplayer. afaik, there isnt anything like that in the game, which is weird, since its very mmo-like

[GaryCXJk]

Here's a pretty obvious one...any game that uses a password system for saving (or a lack of saving altogether) instead of a battery backup.  No one wants to enter long ass passwords every time they want to continue XD.

Okay, let me paint you a picture here.

Let's say we have a simple RPG-like platformer, with just one character. It should store its player level, its weapon and its armor, to keep it simple. To also keep it simple, this character has no inventory, whenever you get a new weapon you have to pick which weapon to keep or which armor to keep. Each password point is at the beginning of each level.

Now, let's assume each data only takes one byte, so, in total you'd only have four bytes. But now you need to convert it to readable data. So, you have the option between using both upper and lower caps, however, there are issues with that, but we'll ignore those for now. So, you have all letters at your disposal, as well as the numbers. Now, we need to have a total of 64 different characters to easily round it out. With both upper and lower case characters, you'd have 52 characters, plus all the numbers make it 62. Now, let's also add an exclamation mark and a question mark, rounding it out to 64.

Now each character can be represented by a six bit value. Each byte is eight bits, so, the total amount of data we need to store is 32 bits. This means that we need at least six characters to cover all the data of the password, as 6 * 6 = 36, four more than the amount of bits we actually need.

Now, like I said, using both upper and lower case characters poses several problems, mainly writing problems. For example, one character can look a lot like an I, an l or a 1 (the upper case i, the lower case L and a one). On top of that, you generally want to simplify the password system, using less characters to represent a password.

So, we'll only use the upper case letters. Also, we'll make the I and 1 (the upper case i and the one) a synonym, as well as the 0 and the O (zero and upper case o). Maybe also the B and the 8 (upper case b and eight), and the 5 and S (five and upper case s). In this case, we only have about 32 characters, with each character being represented by a 5 bit value. This means you need a password of seven characters.

And this is only for data that consists of four bytes.

[Koh]

Oh, I understand WHY some of them were long, for all the customizable data that needs to be loaded in, but they did often include a lot of unnecessary characters in the system, and also were longer than necessary for some games.  A perfect example being Rambo NES.  See AVGN about that here:  https://youtu.be/ttd_HcgaoXQ?t=400

Here's one that popped into mind overnight, and would be for nearly every game out there these days:  Either an instant access, or unlockable Sound Tests.

Am I the only one who misses the days in gaming when it was common to include a sound test in the game, so players could listen to all the music and such whenever they wanted?  Some games still do it, like the Puyo Puyo series for example, and every track is unlocked as you first hear them in the game.  But it's becoming increasingly rare, and it makes Koh sad.

[Jermungandr]

That's mostly because sound tests were primarily included to appeal to Japanese audiences, and nowadays every game made and released in Japan has an OST released alongside it instead, so that they can make more money off of consumers by getting them to buy a second, easy to create item.

[BullockDS]

Oh, I understand WHY some of them were long, for all the customizable data that needs to be loaded in, but they did often include a lot of unnecessary characters in the system, and also were longer than necessary for some games.  A perfect example being Rambo NES.  See AVGN about that here:  https://youtu.be/ttd_HcgaoXQ?t=400

Although the passwords weren't as bad as some NES era titles, I thought it was kinda silly that Mega Man X1-3 and MM7 used passwords for how far into the SNES' lifespan they were released (93-95).

@daemoth: I think some recent Capcom fighters allow for simple-input specials (IIRC Super Street Fighter IV 3DS had such a feature). However, I'd only be comfortable if simple-input specials did lesser damage. I will say, though, that SNK fighters can have absolutely bullshit inputs.

Speaking of silly inputs, though, I would change Super Smash Bros Melee in two major ways: streamlining wavedashing to make it easier to do yet less effective in use (less distance for certain characters and some frames of lag in between dashes), and remove L-canceling altogether (I'd put the landing lag for aerials somewhere more than L-canceling but less than landing without it).

[GaryCXJk]

Oh, I understand WHY some of them were long, for all the customizable data that needs to be loaded in, but they did often include a lot of unnecessary characters in the system, and also were longer than necessary for some games.  A perfect example being Rambo NES.  See AVGN about that here:  https://youtu.be/ttd_HcgaoXQ?t=400

The status and inventory already take up twelve bytes. Two bytes for Life (it goes up to 800 in that password gameplay, which is more than 255), and two for experience. 32 characters come down to a total of 24 bytes of data, so already half of it is taken by the inventory and other things. Even if experience isn't saved, it's still 10 bytes of data used. This leaves us with a total of 14 bytes of data. Now, we can assume that at least one byte is used for location, but I think we can also assume it needs to store events being cleared, as well as other things that have been collected.

If a password system is long, it's because it actually needs to store your progress.