What improvement do you want to see in games next generation?

For me it has to be physics and polygon count.

Graphics have come a long way over the last 10 years but physics haven't had any where near the same amount of effort instilled on them to improve.

Half Life 2 really pushed physics to a new level in terms of integration and I'm struggling to find a recent game that set's a new standard for physical interaction with the player and world.

It's no use having graphics that try to look like the real world if they don't behave like the real world.

Horizon: Zero Dawn is beautiful but an Horizon: Zero Dawn with a state of the art physics engine with every object in game having physics would be mind blowing!

And.........Polygon counts.........nothing needs to be said here...........when DX11 released with tessellation I genuinely thought it would be the end of flat ground/wall textures and hard edges in graphics......and yet we still have them. Crysis 2 had fully tessellated walls and they looked awesome but aside from the odd game doing it there's not really been much effort gone in to it.

I would love to finally see the end of flat ground and wall textures.

What would you like to see an improvement on?

Open world choices really changing the world a lot and more than 3 dialog options. The choice of 1st or 3rd (even the option to use vr) person in most games.

-Less focus on so many online only games.

-More interactions with more objects in games.

Games returning to the budget and development time of PS2/Xbox/GC era.

Due to fancy graphics today's games take too much time to come out, having MicroTransactions,DLCs that are cut content and are more safe than being experimental.(Which is why we get so much clones of everything successful than originality)

Does not matter what improvement they bring, just bring me more with solid gameplay and story and less openworld crap!!!

Want to see higher frame rates being pushed, and bigger and better open worlds over the stuff they've been coming up with. More varied locales and lived-in, not boring speedtree crap like Ghost Recon: Wildlands.

The TC says that physics wasn't pushed beyond HL2, makes me wonder if TC have ever played Motorstorm. If that racing game got everything wrong, it definitely did physics right, especially player interactive physics.

Just want FPS on next gen, in the meantime I'll jump to 1440p/60fps.

TC suggests you re-read what he said and try again....

@scatteh316:

I "re-read" like the TC suggested, and still think that my response is valid. Thanks for the tip though.

1) Graphics

2) Bigger and far more detailed worlds

3) Physics

4) Shadow / Lighting

5) Animations

6) 60fps minimum ( though with 4K trend this wont be the case ... )

Physics as you said and not just for set pieces but real physics that can be used by player in gameplay, second is AI, again tying into physics. AI should also be able to take advantage of games physics.

Nope...still wrong...... I never said "Physic's wasn't pushed beyond HL2" as you claimed.

I said I'm struggling to find recent games (As I've not played everything) that set's a new standard for Physics.

Big difference between what I said and what you think I said.......

So no, your response is not valid.

MS, MonsterBox, StormCloud...

:P

I’m actually happy with graphics like god of War and horzion zero dawn.. I guess just better flame rates.

How about some actual effort put into mission design and having some variety there.

Too many modern games (especially AAA) have the most repetitive, banal, uninteresting mission design. Doing the same boring & mindless shit over & over & over. It's like they're so creatively bankrupt and just going thru the motions now.

I agree on physics as well. BotW would be pretty mediocre if not for its pervasive, interactive physics available to both the player and NPCs. It transforms the game into something immersive and full of emergent gameplay. As you noted, HZD would be some kind of untouchable masterpiece if it had all of its goodies PLUS the physics system of BotW or beyond.

Graphics, to me, are pretty saturated. Devs should keep pushing the boundaries with visuals, but the fact is most games look at least fine these days, even when the dev clearly poos them out. But gameplay can continue to evolve and enrichen through physics improvements

@scatteh316:

Well then allow me put a "cap" on this debate between me and you.

What we're currently debating on is completely subjective. It's all a matter of perspectives, and mines differ from your's. So while your outlook on physics isn't wrong, neither was my response. You say that you haven't really found a recent game to set a standard for physics, while I believe that Motorstorm (amongst others games) already has. I was clearly responding to you in "MHO" type of way.

No dude....you claimed I said something I did not, the cap was already put on it when I replied above.

The end.

@scatteh316:

Well quoting only part of my response when the reason why I quoted you in the 1st place is definitely in the part that you "clearly" left out, is definitely proof that this is the end. Great game though. Would definitely play again.

New name for solid 30fps!!!

God bless ^^

I'm happy with the level of physics in flight sims and this is 2011 tech. Now, if it can be applied to other genres. For flight sims, I'd like a higher polygon count.

lol God damn Cell phone with is auto correct words..

Things like physics, AI, world geometry and impact detection will all happen thanks to much more powerful cpu's. What I would like to see is things like 16x anisotropic filtering, ultra shadows, AO, high quality pass per-object motion blur become standard across all games.

Fully Destructible Environments: What we have is not good enough.

Physics: I want GTA6 to have a revamped fighting system. I want Smackdown Here Comes The Pain controls.

I want to Irish whip people into oncoming traffic. I want to powerbomb people onto cars, suplex them through park benches and pick up the broken wood and use it to stab them to death.

Rockstar, it’s time to step up and give us a next gen GTA. You have no excuse not too.

Variety.

If anyone is still doing Physics on the CPU next generation they need a slap.

@scatteh316: umm physics still run best on cpu. Gpgpu can only go so far with those calculations. Besides developers will need the gpu to push a native 4k image in most games while also handling textures, effects, lighting, etc. If we are assuming at the high end we will have 12-15tflops of power and a 8 core zen chip, remember while doing all this the games have to look next-gen.

A.I

Honestly, if we're going to get open-world games can we please make the AI behave somewhat descent? I love Witcher 3, but this fault applies to pretty much all open world games.

Second, missions. Games tend to be really repetitive with their mission structure. Please some effort and enough of the "Hey, I can't do it myself I need you to be the hero because no one else can do it"

Visual graphics, honestly a bit. But there are still so many things that the gaming industry needs to improve: World behavior and reaction, physics, AI, etc...

Physics use Async compute so doesn't really cause issues on the GPU front.

4k will also be more ROP and bandwidth dependent then it will the ALU's.

And no......GPU's are still much, much faster at Physic's the CPU's are.

Better AI. Seriously, AI is really shitty nowadays, because of weak console CPUs. Since FEAR only one game had AI as good (Killzone 2) but none were any better.

Consoles should optimize for at least 60 fps. And I specify consoles since PC enables players to achieve this with variable hardware, variable settings, or combinations of both within their own ideal solution at what ever budget. But with console games being mostly fixed or with limited preset options, it's mostly up to the developers to balance their engine and game design to afford the best possible frame rate with minimal visual impact. Or basically not to focus all resources solely on shiny-of-shiniest grrrrrrrrrraaaphics.

In conjunction with frame rate; an open source adaptive sync technology. By making a unified standard of display hardware with a standardized driver available to all developers, all games (and gamers) can benefit from the seamless fps/Hz synergy that would work with any GPU driving the game with any brand of monitor, on PC and all consoles. There's already competition between GPU chipsets (Nvidia & AMD) and the associated brands (Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, EVGA, Zotac, etc...) with the variety/options of performance, power efficiency, performance/cost ratio, cooling solutions, noise ratings, multi-monitor support, aesthetics, driver software features and such... we shouldn't have competition committing the graphics card to specific displays, limiting those consumer options.

More ultrawide support; it's already here on PC, as it's always had flexible resolution options, so they just need to expand the library and enable more adaptive UI for the games to accommodate the aspect ratio. And let's see this available for consoles. If there's presets for graphics/performance scaling, they can have an aspect option in the game menu. Game worlds are so much more breath taking with that panoramic vista, and even overhead games like RTS and dungeon crawlers benefit from that expanded real estate. I'm telling you, once you've gone to 21:9, going back to 16:9 is like going back to the old "square" 4:3 box.

Less cut scene teletale games, less battle royal, more emphasis on innovation in gameplay, less talking and more actual playing. More story telling through gameplay and not cutscenes.

Do you consider interactive dialog as part of story telling through gameplay? (among other mechanics)

Full campaign co-op option should be the standard next gen.

- Improvements in NCP AI in openworld games so they don't continually repeat the same 2-3 phrases over and over

- Systems in place that allow you to interact with any and everything in the environment a la Breath of the Wild

- Improved framerates

- The ability to do literally whatever you want kinda like @stuff238 said lol

That'd be nice, but I doubt that's going to happen. Unfortunately.

For me, from a technical standpoint I'd like to see more games target 60fps and also games load faster (which Phil Spencer said both are targets for the next Xbox, which is exciting).

Less fetch quests. Just make the game shorter or try to make for a better story. Fetch quests are maddening to me VERY often make me just quit the game altogether. Also, frame rates.

It might seem counter progressive, but the look and graphics of games these days is fine with me. I could really care less if graphics remain as they are now.

I agree with the TC though. Physics, and AI should really be pushed next gen. Hopefully the new hardware will allow for it.

I'll use GTA5 as an example. It would be cool to have things like river levels rising, and flooding when it rains for extended periods. Have construction workers working on buildings, and actually be able to see those buildings transform, and get erected over weeks/months. Send an RPG into a convenient store, and the store stay closed until repaired and reopened. Not magically done after you circle the block. Be able to cause structural damage. Not just cosmetic. Have the police use more advanced AI tactics, and try to arrest you, rather than shooting on sight for jaywalking. Large ships cruising the ocean that you can operate and drive that aren't static. The whole game being open rather than all the loading screens would be nice too.

I dont want anything groundbreaking or new. I want things to go back. RPGs need deep character customization and deep dialogue trees with more that 2 choices. A simple good-bad alignment is also not good enough. A 9 point dnd style alignment system which affects your party members and their interactions, I want that back. All of this was already implemented and mastered by 2001-02. How the rpg genre has regressed over the last two decades is disappointing.

SHADERS and OTHER LIGHTING.

Much better animations, hit reactions and more animation bones.

Much better hair.

Less clipping issues.

More buttons and/or better use of the Playstation's touchpad.

Faster load times.

I'm okay with 1080p/30fps dedicated most else to better shaders/lighting.

Firstly, a mandatory 60fps in all 1080 games across the board. This should start becoming a standard by now.

Mostly I’d like to see much more attention paid to detail. We’re already at the point of diminishing returns where the power could be used better elsewhere. Given more memory, it’d be great to see more long-term consistency in the state of the game world. More permanently destructible environments, wear and tear to characters, etc. just an insane amount of detail to every aspect of the presentation (I’m thinking Naughty Dog level but even more so).

How about nights that look like nights aka dark, really dark? It's 2018 and only a handful of games do nights as they should be.

Always online, Pay to win, No crossplay between anything

Better AI, 60fps standard and even more support to indie development.

@jun_aka_pekto: I agree with this. Night time in most games is just day time with a different color. Other games also show a magical circle of light arround the player. Not a fan.

They could pretty much improve on everything graphics wise. Texture resolution, mapping, lighting, physics, etc.

There's tons of room for improvement.

But, really, as far as gaming goes, I'd love to see better storylines and characters(Most of them are just terrible) perhaps including ultimate decisions that result in different consequences/alternate storylines.