Important features that no game should be without.

ah, this one I have to fight.   "Quicksave" or something similar is fine, they should exist. (a save game that gets deleted when loaded, and otherwise takes you out of the game so you can pick up exactly where you left off)   However you should not be able to save anywhere at any time (unless its using above quicksave feature)    Games that let you save anywhere usually will suffer from the 'save-anywhere-syndrome' and if they don't, the designers are not aptly adjusting difficulty curves (pokemon for example, does not suffer from this, mainly because game is supposed to be so easy you can't tell).

save-anywhere-syndrome as an effect on difficulty curves as a direct result of being able to have no penelty for death (i.e. can just load your save game and you are put back EXACTLY where you last saved, which after your 1st death will be exactly before the point of death).  Games that have you start over at the begining of a level or at a save point have a frustration level that players will desire to be kept to a minimum by having to play through the same section of a game over and over (i.e. the few rooms between the save point and a boss).  Good designers should space their save points so that there is a desire not to just let yourself die, but no frustration so extreme that a person does not want to keep playing.  If you can save anywhere, then either A: the game will become too difficult, B: the game will not be challanging AT ALL, or C: there will be very dramatic and short spikes in difficulty at certain junctions.   As A and B are bad, the ending result is (and should be based on the options) C.   RPGs that try to steer away from save points are always the first to come to mind, though some FPS games do too.

There has been a recent D: Which is to randomize events in such a way that the save-anywhere-syndrome cannot manifest since something might change when the game is re-loaded.  But only top-notch AAA titles can utilize this as it is very difficult to do, and even then some projects just don't have the scope for it.

Obviously some games are exceptions to this rule.  Many games are designed with the hope that the save-anywhere-syndrome can be avoided.   But some games, just can't not-have-it.   Platformers, for example:  they need to force you to restart a level after a save or after X lives, or they would be stupid.   Many FPS games are the same way.   Doom 3 might have been a good game, except the designers failed to stop the effects of save-anywhere-syndrome and thus the game became crap.  Players would twitch quicksave (since all surprises usually had a fair warning of the room going dark or something) then you could easily fight the same guy 2 or 3 times to kill him.  If it actually forced you to fight a guy, then maybe the game would have been better.

Added:   many real-time strategy games are also able to avoid this since the process of 'losing' takes place over a long period of time, there is no 1 point at which it turns (exceptions of course, but I mean in general) so there will come a point that a player will just have no choice but to restart the level (or set the game back a good distance) to be at a point where the tide can still be turned.

The rest I agree 100%  (wouldn't an easy way to colorblind check the text is just have a feature that lets you adjust the color of the text and the text boarder? I'm not color blind so I can only imagine )

Some games that rely entirely on checkpoint-based save systems run into rather stupid problems. I remember reading one player's experience with mirrors edge. One level of that game takes place in a really big pit, I've never seen it myself but the description sounds a lot like a missile silo. The objective is to essentially climb out of the pit through any means available. The problem that player had was that when he took a big fall off a platform and died at the bottom of the pit. The bottom of the pit is where he respawned. This then forced him to backtrack all the way back up the silo.

Now arguably that is an easy problem to fix. Simply spawn players at the last saved checkpoint instead of the checkpoint closest to them when they die. But that is only one of many problems and some could be considered "unfixable" because they are essentially part of the core gameplay. Having checkpoints at all can be a problem on its own. If you are unable to make it to the next checkpoint you basically have a choice between endlessly restarting from last save point or just giving up and quitting the game.

--

It could also be argued that being able to save anywhere is the same as being able to save-scum anywhere. But in this case I simply included it as an extention of being able to quit on demand.

Quite simply, if I am able to quit anytime and anywhere. I should not have to lose any game progress in the process of exiting.

8. Some sort of autosave feature. By this I don't neccesarily mean checkpoints. The game should automatically save the game into a hard file of some sort and keep a useful number of the backups. Even if the player is using "ironman" rules they can always ignore this feature for normal gameplay, while using it to recover from game crashes and the like. The game Alpha Centauri has a particularly convenient version of this. Without being asked the game will save the game state at the start of every turn and keep a library of previous game turns. At any time you could roll back 1,2,3,4,5,10,15 or 30 game turns. (and of course, don't forget to add a button that turns this feature off)

ah, but that is failure on the design side in general.  Obviously you need to play-test your checkpoint system so that you do not somehow set your player 5 checkpoints behind where they should be.   Also, Mirrors edge is just a bad example in general because it has one of the worst excuses for a difficulty curve I've seen a while (more like a difficulty brick wall that game is).

You address this in your 2nd paragraph by explaining how EA could have fixed their own problem.   But, again its not a problem with the checxpoint system, its a problem with Mirror's edge's checkpoint system.

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But yes, quick save feature to pick up the game where you left off *rabble rabble*, seperate from the 'perma-save' at begining of level or whatever is appropriate.

At the same time you don't want it to be disorienting for players.  Like don't save in mid-conversation so they have no clue what is the topic of conversation or what is happening when they come back, but something reasonable.

Ah now I remember the word I was looking for.

9. Add a resume feature activated on exit. Whenever you quit the game or simply return to the main screen the game should save the state of the game at the time you exited. When you want to continue, instead of loading up a savegame you simply hit a button labelled "resume" and then pick up where you left off. This would not allow for save scumming because if you load the game and quit again the old resume savegame would be overwritten. However in the case of a game crash you would still be able to resume as normal.

Check point only/limited save systems means repetition and repetition means having my time wasted. Such systems also force me the play the way the designers want rather than the way I want, and, as the final insult, check point only does not allow me to quit whenever I see fit without suffering lost progress. It's a lazy design feature implemented because it's easier than coding a robust and flexible save game system. This rot has spread so far I've played several modern PC games that don't even allow the naming of save files. Why do PC games in the 21st century have cruder save game systems than games of 1980s? There is no technical or design justification for it. If some gamers feel they aren't "challenged" by save anywhere then simply don't save anywhere - what could be simpler?

Yeah I'm all for being able to save anywhere, except possibly in tactical battles. My reasoning for this is that overall game turns take a while, so if I make a relatively minor mistake or some small bad thing happens I don't want to be bothered with loading a save game from a turn or two ago. But in tactical battles, which are more action-packed and faster paced, it'd be too easy to just constantly load every time something you tried didn't work out so well.

I also really like your 'resume' idea Tamren. It probably wouldn't save you in the case of the game crashing, though, because the game would probably not have the opportunity to record your current state unless it does it constantly in the background (which would be a poor use of resources). But nonetheless a great idea. I've been in the middle of huge battles in games like HoMM when something comes up and I really need to quit immediately. The options presented in HoMM games were pretty terrible - you could autoresolve, save and quit; or you could retreat and quit, losing your progress since the last save. I would be a very happy camper if I could quit the game in the middle of combat and return to it later, right where I left off in the battle (paused, preferably :P).

They did it in Fire Emblem 7 for the GBA pretty well by having the save action be so fast it would be near impossible for anything to interupt it.   Alternatively you could do it the pokemon way, where there are 2 save files at any given time.    If the most recent save file gets corrupted it goes back to the one before it, so if it regularly auto-saves to prevent losing any place in your game, and it crashes during said auto-save then it would just load the save before it.   With the price of storage space these days being what it is, that isn't unreasonable.

@Gananim - It usually isn't being too lazy to design a flexible save system.   Its easy enough just to write all related-ram to a save file and literally bring the game up exactly where left off.  In fact, THAT is the lazy way out, so if you see a game that has a huge save file but doesn't really have any real user data like custom models or levels or something, they probebly did exactly that.

Yes, developers want you to play the way they want.  Because if they ever let you play the way you want (unless it happens to be the way they want) then you probebly broke something.  They will design what they can to give you as many options as possible hoping that you will find something that IS the way you want to play (look at stardock, they want us to play with our own armies and stuff for this game), but ultimately it is still the way they want.   Its like saying Hollywood is insulting you for making a movie that plays the way they want.   Or a book author is to blame for writing a book the way he or she wants it to be read.  It is going to work the way the creator created it, and that is a fact and impossible to avoid (except creating your own, but both defeats the purpose of getting somebody else's creation since you arn't using it and then you have just become the thing you hate right?  Well, unless you don't let other people play it >_>' )

The checkpoint system isn't a 1980's system.   I'd challange you to find an action game from the 1980s that uses a checkpoint system anything like mirror's edge.   The closest I can think of is Sonic 1, oh wait... that is the 1990's and still not quite the same as the invisable checkpoint system of Mirror's Edge where the checkpoints literally exist every few moments so you don't have to repeat any set of obsticles.  That is a very 'modern' system design with casual players in mind who complain about things like 'wasted time' because they don't want a challange that lasts more than 1 or 2 minutes because they probebly are only playing the game for like 20 min during a quick respite after work anyway.

Even so, the age of the system really doesn't matter.  I'll be the first to just on a soup-box and shout that old stupid systems should be done away with, but save systems are constantly being evolved and adapted to meet the design needs of a game and the abilities of its hardware.  It is not like say, our stupid qwerty keyboards, where a super-majority blindly follow a design that was not really designed so much as was randomly created and made obsolete very shortly after it hit the mass market.  Designers just go back to stuff similar to older systems (like save points) because its as you said.  "simply don't save anywhere".

Ok, the failure for a PC game to let you name your save files is pretty un-excusable if it uses anything close to a normal save system.  But before I can really jump on your ban wagon there I'd have to know the game and see what kind of data they use to label the save files since they may have figured nobody would care and you'd have enough info from the save file itself.

----  (yes, I type on the Dvorak Keybord.  If you don't know what that is, you should go look it up and switch yourself.   Your hands will love you for it.  It is NOT like relearning the keyboard, just because they key arrangements are very intuitive, just print out a copy of it and put it on your wall for a month.  I gauruntee you'll have it down pat in a month. ) ----

Quick saves are an important part of how GalCiv2 can work well for folks running on boxes that don't meet sys reqs, and they are a godsend when a single player is feeling out new stuff from an update. It's also enables a good workaround for folks who like some or most Mega Events but find a few of them just no fun.

Gananim's right about the "save scumming" thing--if the practice offends you, don't do it.

If I could find DVORAK drivers for my logitech G15 I would happily take a screwdriver, pop off all the keys and reconfigure them manually.

The trend away from named game saves is quite annoying. More games than I can remember now only give your save a DATE and the name of the area the save was made. Some more recent games like Mass Effect add a picture, but only a generic picture of that location.

10. Custom naming of savegames. It takes less than 1kb to store one line of text. And most people only need one or two words. Bonus points if you automatically add the time, date and a screenshot of whatever the player was looking at when the save was made.

DVORAK drivers?   its not drivers that changes it, it is the language options.   It is installed on every single PC windows ME and up, and its on the install disc for 95 and 98 (but not installed by default).   You can't not install the Dvorak layouts with windows anymore unless you don't install English because it is the only other US keyboard "standard" according to IME or whatever that acronym is for who manages that stuff.   You can pick to use Dvorak or standard english upon windows' install process, you just actually have to press details on the language screen.

(off topic rant)

for XP and vista >> start/control panel/language + region > language > details button.   Then click "add" its the default.  for anything older than XP you have to check "use IME standard" or something like that, and its the 1st default.    Alternativly, if you remember the hotkey for the language bar, the settings button takes you right there.

After its added ctrl + shift or alt + shift is the default hotkey to switch keyboard layouts.  I just make dvorak my default, but sometimes its nice for when others have to sit at my computer.  It stays on my roaming profile at work, and the language bar is enabled by default at my school for japanese class.   Back in high school I had to go into control panel each time, but really that takes less than a minute and is totally worth it.

Mac uses I believe alt + shift, but don't quote me on that.  And I've never sat down infront of another OS where it came up (since all the linux users I know already have it on Dvorak and Android does not yet have a way to switch I understand)

I actuall recommend against re-arranging your keys because you will better learn the new layout (since you won't be able to hunt-peck) but some people want it that way.  It does help with hotkeys, especially when you are first starting.  Not having to hunt-peck though makes it easier to show off to others as you sit down to THEIR computer and start typing in dvorak.

(back on topic)

Dvorak IS a standard in the US (not as rare as you would think), games that can't accomidate for it are sinful.  It is almost as bad as not letting color blind play your game because of text issues.  (ok, that is a pretty big 'almost' since you can't help being color blind, but that isn't the point I'm trying to make here)

The only recent game that comes to mind is Bioshock who makes certain keys unbindable for reasons that don't make sense, those keys are moved to important FPS control locations.  as a result you are forced to use the qwerty layout, but ctrl + shift actually has a function in the game, and so you switch to the keyboard you want > opens a menu, and to close the menu again would UNDO your keyboard switch.  (the solution is to tap the keys quickly so you have hit it twice while the menu is still coming up, then when you leave its set to the correct layout)

I add that to the list.

11.   Don't prevent keybinding or do anything that would prevent alternate standards such as Dvorak from being used in game.

Id like to expand on that.

12. Fully support custom keybinding to keyboards, mice, joysticks and gamepads. Granted you don't always need all 4. I wouldn't expect to be able to play Elemental with a joystick but if I decide to play with an upside down keyboard then nothing should stop me!

13. Include mouse sensitivity and invert mouse settings. Custom in-game mouse sensitivity controls are mandatory for any game that links mouse control to the player view. If that game is an RTS or has an RTS component then view scroll speed also falls into the category of mouse settings. And making a space or flight simulator without an invert mouse option is a capital crime. That also means games which include a flight or driving component.

14. If you game includes content that requires multiple methods of control, keep these methods separately configurable. Simple enough, if at some point in your FPS game I have to hop into a plane, make sure that I can do things like turn mouse invert on for flight controls and off for foot controls.

No game should ever use GFWL for any reason.

Correction:  It should be one alt-F4 away at all times.  At the most, a confirmation of the alt-F4.

That confirmation could be as simple as hitting f4 twice. So alt-F4F4 should close the program so fast you will wonder if it was on in the first place. Something like that would be a helpful crash recovery command.

Also:

15. Disable the windows function key by default and or add a toggle switch. If you didn't know most keyboards have a functiion key that sits between alt and ctrl. This brings up the windows start menu when you press it and most people consider it completetly useless. When you press it during a game bad things can happen. The least of which being your game gets minimized, for very complex games minimizing and back can result in long load times. The worse is various crashes and bugs that seem to never get fixed.

16. Allow players to customize visual settings before launching the game for the first time. At the very least this should be the power to select resolution. This is doubly important if you force players to watch the entire intro the first time.

17. Give players the option of disabling into cinematics. Its okay if I must watch the intro in its entirity the first launch. But after that give me a way to turn all of that off, and add a button inside the game that lets me watch the intro again, sans the legal and advert stuff. If you can't turn these things off they will slow down the launch of your game, even if you skip them manually.

Get a decent keyboard with a windows key toggle, or just pop the key off so you CAN'T press it by accident

Personally, the only 'issue' with it other than accidentally hitting it is that minimizing the program isn't always taken nicely, but *should* be.  I like being able to alt-tab out to check my mail, chat, etc etc.

In fact, make that 18...

18.  The game should handle windowed mode gracefully, and should alt-tab out and back in without undue side effects.

This I think is becoming better by nature the further away from the DOS-based windows of the past.   If only you could control the operating system so it didn't start trying to fire up other services  when you came back to explorer (part of what causes the slow-down I believe)

Semi-true; most games handle it with a reasonable degree of 'grace' these days, but you'll ocasionally run into a program that won't.  (Edit:  For example, I ran into a few GalCiv II (don't remember which expansion) bugs regarding alt tabbing.  Rare, but they do happen)

19. The game should be playable without administator rights. (I thought it is a part of the bill of rights. Is it? But today I downloaded a game from impuls and it does not run as a common user. Why does so many games expect, that I have to be administrator?)

Not all do.   What windows are you using?

for example, on Vista, almost nobody is the administrator (since you have to go out of your way to become the administrator).   If you had to be admin to install a game on vista, nobody would.

There might also a setting in windows too, what access non-admins get.  It could be that is just turned up too high.

I have XP Home... (the game is installed with administrator, but it is not playable if you are not administrator... damn)

20. Customizable text size. I like to have high resolution on game. It looks very nice. But many games are also reducing the text size if the resultion goes up. And then I can only read the texts, if I am only 5 cm away from the monitor. Other games have one big text size, where you don't get an overview over the game, because there is only enough space for 8 to 10 lines on the screen. I'd like to have my personal text size on screen...

A bit less technical but applicable for almost any strategy game:

21. No severe resource limitations (e.g. not like any of the Dune series where you're supposed to fight over a planet of immense wealth but you run out of resources in almost every scenario). Just use other levers to force someone to finish the scenario without endless resource gathering and building up a huge army. Limitations to food production would work to impose an army limit for example, without limiting gold mining or so. Or use Gal Civ II's method of often forcing you to act fast before your opponents grow too strong.

22. Preferably have a unit limit above 50, some games have ridiculous restrictions on the size of one's armies.

23. Carry over some of the achievements from 1 scenario to the other, whether it's resources, technology or captured land.

From what I've read, that's definitely part of the plan so far. I think Brad wants a game that can actually let you play something like the battle at Helm's Deep in the Two Towers.

(edit) I should have added something about "if your rig can handle that many units." If I were a betting many, I'd say your hardware will be the real limit on the number of units in a game. I ran GalCiv2 for a long time on a sub-spec machine, and the number of units on the board was clearly the thing that bogged me down--loading a late game was actually a good reason to go do dishes or some other chore that might take half an hour.

This one is FAR to specific to even be 'any strategy'.   Some games will be designed around you being limited to a few units (Demigod, Dawn of War 2) and others will be balanced with few units (Warcraft 2 and 3, even though 2 didn't have a limit you just would NEVER get that many units without cheating and 3 COULD get over 50 if you massed only footman but that would be stupid)

who are you to call a restriction on an army ridiculous?   There is a reason such restrictions were put in place.  Often times is so people can play the game without requiring to upgrade their motherboard again.  If you want big armies play supreme commander or red alert 2 or some other game that is designed that way.  Don't tell designers they arn't allowed to make games with small armies.  That is like saying ice cream isn't allowed to be only vanilla because it should always be at least the 3 flavor blend of neapolitan.   Maybe I only want vinilla ice cream!  without strawberry and chocolate mucking up my experiance.

your 21 is almost offensive too.   How do you justify limiting design options?   Its not like limited resources or small number of units makes a game unplayable, in fact its the exact opposite.   Small unit cap is the only way to game some games run on certain systems and limiting resource cap lets for more design options and memory optimizing.   All the other things on this list are to allow for people to have a solid play experiance.   Being able to save and quit anywhere is something that makes it so the game doesn't twist an arm to make you keep playing because you don't want to loose data.  Text options is so blind people can actually read the text, as well as anybody else who might have problems with the default text.   Saying the designers 'can't do this or that' with the game just because its not your favorite type of play (which is what 21-22 are doing) doesn't belong on this list because not every game should have that.  Its got nothing to do with the standard of quality.

Becauase I have yet to run into a finite-resource system that works once the resources run out -- it ends up just ugly once resources run out.  I'm going to guess his point is the same.

Resource limits are fair -- but all to often they throw number limits in simply to throw number limits in.  Those of us who like playing the economic game end up screwed with those limits; I can build and maintain an army twice your size, but because of some arbitrary limit I can't?  That's just not fair.  (Edit:  oh, and I frequently hit the build cap in War2, whatever you think...)

Given that this is in fact a 4X game, where massive economy Vs. highly skilled military should be a valid option... I'd say he has a reasonable point there.  My economy, not the game engine, should be the limiting factor on army size.  (Within reason... given todays machines, telling me my computer can't handle a decent sized army is just ridiculous)