What aspect of games do you want most improved this gen?

Last gen I was really hyped for better graphics but became really bummed out seeing the massive resources needed in that department which noticeably took away focus and attention in other departments. Prime example for me being FF13. That game was pretty as shit but except for the combat system, everything else suffered greatly and clearly took a backseat.

These days, graphically I feel most games are good enough and I just want developers to concentrate on everything else. I'm sure developers like Naughty Dog will impressive me again visually but I really want to be wowed by other things. A.I. for one obviously has a long way to go. We're still at a point where if a comp is "tough", we're not trying to outsmart it but rather cheese it. It's just something we're so use to and kind of accepted. We shouldn't have to deal with A.I.'s like rubber band A.I.. For example, I think Need for Speed could be a decent mainstream series but every time I play any one of them, I find myself screaming at the TV 'cause of the atrocious A.I. they've maintained to this day. It's just the absolute worst. For example, once I got my personal best time in a race and came in 2nd place because the A.I. came out of nowhere at the last second and past me at a speed the car could never reach, yet the next race I was 10 seconds slower and came in 1st just because I stay in 2nd place the entire race until the end when I boasted past the 1st place A.I. I pretty much stop playing after that 'cause it's a game that punishes you for driving well. Seriously, this is the laziest approach for an AI. They should be a shamed.

I want other things to get better too like the open world. Every time a big game comes out, some critic will same something like "it really feels like a living, breathing world" but I've literally have never felt that before and I don't think it has to do with visual fidelity but the world density. Everything you see in a open world is so skin deep that if you poke it with a stick, everything feels like cardboard.

Anyway, I think we need to be more critical of every aspect of games because that's the only way those things improve.

What do you think we've become complacent about? What do you want to see improved NOW!

A.i.? Graphics? A particular mechanic? World density? Writing? Something else?

@liquiddragon: Can you flesh this topic out a bit with your own opinion, please? If you want to get a good conversation started, setting the tone first with an example really helps instead of just waiting for someone else to start things off.

Expensive art assets are what's strangled the industry a bit. I can't honestly pin down a single aspect because we're seeing stuff come out already. The nemesis system, Metal Gear Solid V's unpredictable sandbox, etc. Every medium gets better with time.

AI for sure. I want to be wowed by AI again, and I feel like it's been ages since that has happened.

I'd also like to see clipping eliminated once and for all, but that's just a "wouldn't it be cool" thing, not really a big deal.

I want better online experiences. I think Forza's driveatars & killer instinct are a step in the right direction. I should be able to have a "clone" of how I play every game available for my friends to use during coop or vs online.

I'd like to be able to go into more buildings

AI. I should not have been playing FEAR for the first time in 2014 and been impressed with what I saw.

I agree with the others who have said AI could be improved. I think more games having something really unique as far as gameplay would be nice and less stuff that's just a mash of mechanics from other successful games.

AI is really the thing that I think is still really lacking. Good AI in most games is hard to come by and its because it is so complex to do properly.

On board with all of these a.i. mentions, I feel like games have been going less 'let's improve our a.i' and more 'let's give people different way to mess with the a.i.' which is cool and all, but I can't think of a single game I've seen where I've gone "wow" at the a.i. in a veeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrry long time.

And although I feel like they've been on their way out, we could do with a bullet in the head of QTE's any and all, QTE's are garbage. Even if you don't hate them, can anyone reading this honestly say they want them? Like has anyone ever gone, "boy, I really hope the next Resident Evil game has a part where I have to A over and over against a cutscene! That's my favorite part!"? I'm gonna doubt it, get rid of 'em.

With the cavalcade of indie games writing really has improved, no need for a big studio to approve a story when you can get a team together and do it yourself, so that's cool, so I do think writing is generally improving, even in the big games as well. But I still find the games that really make me feel something are few and far between compare to other mediums like movies or books or shows and what not.
Some do, Life is Strange recently has been making me experience the emotions but if it could happen more and more that would be cool.

It's difficult to say. I'd be satisfied if, when this generation is over, there was any significant improvement in any aspect of games.

In light of most popular games being released this year being open world games, I hope future open world games improve on the variety and depth of activities to do that are not part of the main story line. Maybe I'd take depth over variety, even if that meant that the world would be smaller.

I just want shit to work. Hearing about all of theses broken games of this generation, especially on PC, it makes me glad that I opted to buy less expensive but functional components when getting into PC gaming in January this year and replay my favorites from the last generation and pick up the ones that I missed out on, instead of waiting month after month to buy a $1,000 worth of parts to play modern games that have some serious game-breaking issues at launch and wait month after month for the games to be patched.

But then again, maybe I'm just being hyperbolic and cynical for the sake of making a post since only four games are coming to mind. Hope that thing with using Quiet in Phantom Pain gets fixed by the time I make some upgrades this winter.

Not launching broken ass games should be the focus now.

Innovation and breakthroughs only happen when you cover the basics.

Yeah, and also building on stuff like the Nemesis System. That sort of bigger picture enemy behaviour thing. I guess MGSV also does something somewhat similar with enemies reacting to your style of gameplay. Just building on all of that to make something super mechanics-driven and with, dare I say, emergent gameplay.

I want see open world games with content that is worth doing and engaging and not just filled with collectables. The Witcher 3 was a great example of how to make side missions fun and Interesting, I hope this catches on and that developers are paying attention to Witcher 3.

Also console games running at 60 fps would also be great. That is shot in the dark.

And last but not least decide where to put subtitles in the option menu. The great subtitle placement experiment has gone on for too long just pick one audio, video or even game option.

Fluidity in traversal seems like a big thing right now. Titanfall, Call of Duty, and even Halo seem to adding a lot of it. Whether that's an improvement is probably subjective though.

Edit: Did the title change? I could swear this thread originally said "What aspect of games do you think improved the most this gen"

As for what I would want... hm. I do wish more buildings were able to be entered, and to completely minimize required load screens.

Amen brother.

Better AI and more complex systems. I think Shadow of Mordor helped me put my finger on what I want out of this generation. While it has some of the problems AAA titles suffer from, the Nemesis system just made it shine. Every time I would get bored by the story missions, I'd just set out to disrupt Sauron's army for a while. Sometimes I'd fail and the chieftain I'd targeted would get stronger. Stuff like that and the myriad little things that Metal Gear Solid V does is what I want out of big budget games.

I would like to see an improvement in AI and for games to not be so short and only focus on the mutliplayer modes.

I find myself liking games more and more for story over gameplay nowadays, so I guess better writing would be a great thing to have. Too often I feel like game stories make concessions to suit gameplay or level design because it's still believed that gameplay should always be more important than story. While I do enjoy a solid gameplay experience, games can be so much more than gameplay. I want stories and characters from developers that don't feel like they need to cater to certain gameplay norms.

I also wouldn't mind a generation where we don't focus on making everything just look better. Instead, I'd like a focus on AI, scope, and performance to take priority. I love seeing a game that blows me away with its visuals, but that only goes so far in making a game memorable. At this point, we should expect more from our games than just sheer graphical power.

I'm going to go with this. Lag can really kill a person's opinion of online gameplay and not all games are very good in this aspect. I was amazed at the online MP of Street Fighter 4 when I booted it up because everything felt very responsive. It wasn't just up until one of the recent Bombcasts that I understood how the developers were able to make that happen, and when I did get the explanation, I was floored.

I also want to piggy back off of @wemibelec90's call for better writing and add that I want better directing. MGSV/Ground Zeroes was the first exposure I had to Kojima, which I then followed up on by starting Metal Gear Scanlon from the beginning. There's quite a contrast to the directing between the Metal Gear Solid series and other games.

This is also going to be a cop-out answer, but more freedom of mechanics within games. I want a game to have many mechanics that aren't restricted to specific moments. This would hopefully make interactivity of those mechanics allow for unpredictable results within the game worlds.

Identity. I want movie envy to fade and I want publishers to be more creatively daring.

I don't think people bother with ai anymore as multiplayer options are so widely available. But yeah, id like to see that stuff blossom again as well cause im an antisocial misanthrope.

I would love for there to be an open world game that's really open world, but the things you do can have much more intricate and subtle effects on the world. Id like it if those things occured organically as well but that may be asking too much of any game. Kinda like having the mostly blank and souless npcs we have now, but over time through interactions and things you do for them they build a relationship with you and in a way form a personality. Then maybe down the road they'll save your ass in a jam or even become recruitable in your party/as an ally. Hard to explain but i want something like the random ai companions you have now, only with a shitton more variables you can effect to the point they become an actual nuanced character even though they were procedurally generated. Might be impossible to do voice acting for unless text to speech improves dramatically. This is all impossible or shit for somewhere 20 years or so down the line, im sure. Maybe we'll finally stop caring about framerate by then.

Also i wish people would quit acting like nearly every game is broken just because of a couple high-profile releases. Most games work just fine or damn nearly enough at release.

I'll stop caring about framerate when framerates in all games are acceptable No game should ever drop a single frame below 30, for any reason whatsoever, at minimum, obviously 60 would be a better goal but I'm willing to meet game developers halfway if we can just keep it at or above 30 instead of struggling to stay there. I love seeing games run butter-smooth. Worth noting that this isn't anywhere near as much of an issue these days, but god damn some of the framerates at the end of last generation were not good. In general, I'd like to see less focus on visual wows and more of a focus on performance this generation. Activision never forced Call of Duty developers to make a game that ran at 30FPS just so it would look better - in fact, I bet they required 60FPS - and look how well those games sell. Why isn't that a standard? Every other part of Call of Duty sure got examined and ripped-off by every major publisher.

I don't think your idea is completely impossible even right now, but it would have to be a game with a small number of NPC's. You know when you walk into Novigrad in The Witcher 3? Yeah, nothing like that. A sparse post-apocalypse might be the best way to go about it. However, I wouldn't expect it to be totally "natural", just really buggy.

Me? I want a sort of "middle budget" kind of game. OK, look, we've got small-budget indie games and $15-$20 downloadable titles, but I want to see the big AAA publishers try their hand at games with budgets big enough to justify a physical release, but not so ridiculously high that they have to sell like hotcakes just to break even. Video game budgets are ridiculous and they're either going to keep bloating until they collapse or become boring and tedious affairs that feel like they were assembled on a factory line and designed by a committee looking at charts. I don't think it's that low yet but I'm pretty sure it will get there.

I just don't see what's so bad about the idea of finding some talent - there's plenty of it to go around - and giving them a bigger budget but not a ridiculous budget. Yes, I do like that 2D games and isometric RPG's have made such a great return, but I want to see 3D games do more experimenting, do something weird and interesting and crazy.

Another thing I want to see is publishers take a greater role in the preservation of video games. In fifteen years, when my Xbox One dies of overuse and Microsoft has shut down the servers, does that mean that I won't be able to buy another one and download all of the updates that made it playable and all of the DLC that I paid for? Or the game itself, if I bought it digitally? If I buy another 360 right now, I can re-download everything I own onto it without issue - will I be able to do that five years from now? Obviously, producing these machines from now on isn't possible, so can we be ensured that the next generation will be fully backwards compatible? Or would it be possible to release an emulator for PC's that runs everything as well as possible? That brings to mind another concern: emulation. It seems like people are still convinced that, at some point, our PC's will be able to emulate 360 and PS3 games, but there isn't even a good emulator for the original Xbox. The PS2, Gamecube, and Wii are the most powerful consoles that can currently be emulated with any sort of accuracy - as consoles have gotten more complex, they've become more and more difficult to emulate, so are we actually going to see the hacking/modding/pirating communities cover the coming parts of video game history? Or can publishers, Sony, and Microsoft actually coordinate well enough to keep Xbox One games playable in, I dunno, twenty years?

I'd like to see fewer open world games. Or, rather, I'd like to see open world games that aren't completely open from minute 1. It would be cool if they would slowly open up to you as you progress, maybe in a Metroidvania or Zelda or Dark Souls-ish sort of way. Open world games need a redesign in general. Go here, do this thing, move on until you've done all of those things. I don't have a problem with a map full of little icons, but there needs to be something else that feels more natural. One of the things that Deus Ex Human Revolution does best, in my mind, is weave its side stuff into its main narrative so that it doesn't feel completely weird when Adam Jensen goes off and does something that isn't necessary to his main quest. It falters here and there, but for the most part every part of that game has some kind of substance.

Anyway, I have written quite a bit and I could probably clean it up a lot and add a few things but it's 3:20 AM so I'm done writing for now.

Kissing. It needs to improve a lot. Only AC Unity kissing scene was alright. It is such a minor detail sure. But just breaks the immersion.

More subtle intimate emotions than bombastic explosions and the chosen one archetypes. Stuff that happens either way no matter what you do. Actually choice and consequence mechanic. It should make you think what to choose rather than automatically suggest choose "good" choice because of gameplay rewards and better ending. More emotion conveyed trough facial animations than speaking.

I'd love to see some more games try to get away from "realistic visuals", and create some really visually stunning fantastical worlds. I have no problem with games going for really realistic looking graphics, even if it usually looks off, but I imagine the right art design with better hardware could look amazing.

Also better stories maybe.

Realistic behavior for characters, Until Dawn has realistic looking characters but they moved like robotic marionettes with their flailing arms and gestures, also video game mouths and teeth are still creepy to this day. Teeth seem always way to big and white.

Load times and quality over quantity.

Having just jumped back into Destiny, online matchmaking. I have no idea how this shitshow of a feature is still standard and accepted. I get that they want it to be quick and easy, but at least have some sort of filtering to it. It might be unfair to compare to Blizzard games (as they tend to be 1-on-1 instead of team based), but some MMR and ladder seperation would go a long long way.

I'd like to see games make their open world side activities feel far more random and fun. Give me a reason to want to continue playing in your giant sandbox, and please don't cheapen it with artificial feeling mountains and singular pathways.

That sounds to me like you mainly play FPS, and I'm not saying that like its a bad thing. I too would like less multiplayer focus.

I just want them to work.

I know this sounds stupid, but the thing that I probably want the most is for guns to no longer just stick to your back. No matter how detailed the game is, your character must slather that rifle in super glue, because it just sticks to their back with no problem. MGSV is one of the most detailed, incredible games ever, but as soon as you headshot that dude with a tranq dart...plop goes that rifle back on your sneaking suit.

When I saw that in Uncharted 4 they are ACTUALLY having a sling on your gun that Drake throws over his shoulder and actually makes the gun wobble around with physics...I was so happy.

I know I am a weirdo, but it's those little things that make games even better.

More developers doing shorter and smaller games in the vein of Grow Home and Valiant Hearts. Also, instead of wasting millions in photorealistic graphics which means the game runs at 30 fps maximum on consoles, games with better AI and more unique art style that isn't as taxing to the system.

@zefpunk: You ain't no weirdo, I'm with you. Small touches like that make things go a long way for me, like how GTAV's flip flops actually flip flop or how Geralt in TW3 lifts the lower part of his sword sheath on his back so he can slide his sword in properly.

Personally I'd love to see more exploration into how stories are told in video games. Your basic campaign featuring ten or so cutscenes is fine, but I hope we get more games that play around with interactivity, the core of what makes games different from other mediums, and how it relates to storytelling.

I'd also like to see more (and better) games made for different people, in hopes of attracting a wider audience into the industry. Whether that boils down to more female protagonists or better representation of other minorities, who can say. There's simply room to improve on that front.

Weather and the passage of time.

One day friends, one day.

I think one of the coolest things this year has shown is that you can still make a good single player game and profit from it. Making good AI would be nice, but that's tricky to do because you have to make AI fun to play with or fuck around with (it's only fun if you're always smarter than the AI). But great story telling is still a thing that draws people towards any medium, and I wish for that to make a huge comeback.

And speaking of story telling, I want more games like Until Dawn. That is a super fun, cool, unique game that is rarely ever made, and actually makes it fun to play with others. I think that kind play time is just right, and I don't mind shelling out full price for such a game, because of the experience I received was (in my opinion) more memorable than many other games with hundreds of hours of play time.

I'll take games with Torchlight level graphics if I can get it at 60 fps, completely destructible and deformable enviroments and zero load times.

Player Choice: multiple paths both in the environment and story.

AI: More autonomous actions and deeper behaviors by both friendly and enememy NPCs

Id love to see better more immersive AI. AI hasnt felt like its changed since the PS2.

@rebel_scum: I do play a lot of FPS, when I was younger I played more RPGs that FPS.