Mantismat
03-17-2008, 09:53 AM
Howdy all.
As it happens, I work in the IT industry, alas not in the gaming sect and there is one thing which we often do after a project, which is a "Lessons learned" session.
In which all of the developers, testers, analysts etc will sit down and discuss what went wrong with the last product. From this, a clever organisation will list "Best practices", a list if you like of things which the team need to remember for their next project.
Have a think about what niggles you've been seeing a little too much these days, or things which just seem a little wrong.
I'll start the ball rolling with a few examples, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what can bug you about a game and what simple steps could be used to counter act these.
1) Cut Scenes.
This is an obvious one - the inability to skip a cut scene, yes we all know how much work you put into this, but please don’t force us to watch these.
2) Multiplayer options - on the fly
Point in case would be Gears of War, a great multiplayer game which took so many drunken weekends of my life. However, as anyone who's played this for a decent amount of time will tell you, that the inability to make ANY changes to the game after you've started the lobby is annoying. This means that if you wanted to change some of the weapons, or the level cycle, you'd have to kick everyone out, set up and again and invite.
3) Party systems (that work)
Halo 3 was the first time I’d ever taken a Halo game online and I fell in love with the party system. I know COD has one, but it just doesn’t seem as robust. I love in Halo the fact that after a match you're able to bring other players into your party and continue with the next match up, without having to change anything.
I'll leave it there and see what else you guys have
Mantismat
As it happens, I work in the IT industry, alas not in the gaming sect and there is one thing which we often do after a project, which is a "Lessons learned" session.
In which all of the developers, testers, analysts etc will sit down and discuss what went wrong with the last product. From this, a clever organisation will list "Best practices", a list if you like of things which the team need to remember for their next project.
Have a think about what niggles you've been seeing a little too much these days, or things which just seem a little wrong.
I'll start the ball rolling with a few examples, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what can bug you about a game and what simple steps could be used to counter act these.
1) Cut Scenes.
This is an obvious one - the inability to skip a cut scene, yes we all know how much work you put into this, but please don’t force us to watch these.
2) Multiplayer options - on the fly
Point in case would be Gears of War, a great multiplayer game which took so many drunken weekends of my life. However, as anyone who's played this for a decent amount of time will tell you, that the inability to make ANY changes to the game after you've started the lobby is annoying. This means that if you wanted to change some of the weapons, or the level cycle, you'd have to kick everyone out, set up and again and invite.
3) Party systems (that work)
Halo 3 was the first time I’d ever taken a Halo game online and I fell in love with the party system. I know COD has one, but it just doesn’t seem as robust. I love in Halo the fact that after a match you're able to bring other players into your party and continue with the next match up, without having to change anything.
I'll leave it there and see what else you guys have
Mantismat