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Usability is a buzzword generally used for plain-Jane software
applications. In human-speak, it means how easy something is to use,
and how well it does its job. It hasn't often been applied to games
(although, amusingly, I have seen a couple of academic papers in
prestigious conferences about it), but it's high time it is. We
gamers are growing older, have less free time and more
responsibilities, and simply do not have the kind of flexibility we
once did. Usability is something game companies should be far more
involved in than they are.
To that end, I'm going to present my top ten features which I
think should, or should not, be in RPGs. As an aside, to present my
dubious credentials, I'm just about finished an M.Sc. in Computer
Science with a focus on usability, so while I'm not necessarily any
better equipped to talk about it, I have perhaps been
thinking about it more than average folks.
1. Include a pause button. This seems like a laughably
simple idea - and yet the number of recent RPGs which don't adhere
to it is astounding. Even those that do provide some sort of pause
button only do so at certain times - for example, not during
cutscenes (Dragon Quest VIII), or not during battle (Xenosaga
Episodes I and II). In fact, the only almost-perfect example I can
really think of, ironically, is a series geared towards younger
players: Kingdom Hearts. However, even that doesn't go far enough,
because during the FMV sequences, pause is again disabled. There's
absolutely no reason that FMVs shouldn't be pausable. I don't want
to have to choose between missing an important phone call and
missing valuable scenes which I worked damn hard to get to and can't
get back to without losing half an hour of game time.
2. Have frequent save points. This is just as bad
as not pausing: forcing me to sit down for an hour straight without
allowing me to save. As I've rambled about time and again, and as
has been mentioned recently in these pages, there's a simple
solution to frequent saving that does not impact game difficulty at
all - I call it a "quick delete save." You can save wherever and
whenever you want (within reasonable limits) but as soon as you load
it, it deletes itself. You're essentially "hibernating" to start up
later (similar to what happens in laptops - the contents of memory
are saved to hard disk). I've seen exactly two console games that
implement this: Shadow of Destiny, which isn't really an RPG, and
Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. People: get on this bandwagon NOW. I
don't always have an hour, or even half an hour, to kill. If
the choice is between playing for that long and not playing, your
game is going to go hungry.
3. Allow us to skip scenes. The good way to do this is
Xenosaga/FFX-2, where we pause the scene and then can cancel it. The
bad way to do this? Star Ocean 3, which demanded that we decide
whether or not to skip a scene before it actually happened and hence
before we could really figure out what scene we're skipping. The
worst way? All those games which don't let us skip at all. And
here's a hint: Plain old non-voiced dialogue is also a scene,
and takes just as long, if not longer, than voiced ones. And a
pet peeve for Xenosaga Episode II: If you let us save after the
ending, and indeed you sort of depend on us fighting the final boss
over and over again for money, let us skip the ending too, yes?
4. Don't inundate us with splash screens. Recent (i.e.
post-SNES) games have insisted on showing us the logo of every
single company that had anything to do with the game before it lets
us load. Guys - enough. I've seen it already. There's no reason I
should have to sit through it every time I start up. The most
egregious violater of this is (oddly, considering its other good
points) Kingdom Hearts; I measured a full minute from the time I
started up the console until I could actually move around my
character. That's just nuts.
5. Allow button customization. If you insist on using
strange controls (i.e. ones that don't conform to the now-standard
Final Fantasy VIII setup) or have non-standard functionality, you'd
better include some way to customize the buttons. Dragon Quest VIII
was the worst in recent memory for this, since its "menu" button
took the place where "cancel" usually goes - and "menu" often
doubled as "accept." Bad idea.
6. Use menu shortcuts. In RPGs, we will spend hours
tinkering around menus. Do us a favor and give us some shortcuts to
move around. There are no less than eight standard buttons on the
PS2 controller (not counting L3, R3, Start, and Select) but
generally only three or four are used. Let R1/L1 switch characters
and R2/L2 scroll through lists. Let Square cycle between submenus,
Triangle de-equip something, and Select pull up more info on a
selection. These are simple additions which can save tons of time
and frustration. Kudos to Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story
for doing a superb job in these areas.
7. Lean off the randomness. I know, RPGs have always loved
random stuff. But as a gamer, I abhor it. Particularly loathsome is
what's evilly known as "random drops." If you really want me to
fight ten slimes to get an item, here's an idea: have a counter, and
when I've fought ten slimes, drop the item. If you give me a
1 in 10 chance of getting it, guess what? Statistically, every time
I fight a slime I will have a 1 in 10 chance of getting it. Those
chances do not get better. Give us a bit of slack, will you?
That also goes for forcing us to run around an area hoping to run
into a particular enemy - at the least, have individual points in
the area only be populated by one type of enemy.
8. Voices. Let us pick voice, subtitle, or both. Don't
stick us with subtitles if we don't like them, and don't remove
subtitles completely either (we can't read lips when they don't line
up with the speech). Let us decide whether voices are on during
battle or not. Honestly, sometimes we just get sick of it,
especially if your voice actors aren't as good as you think they
are.
9. Teleportation. Modern RPGs are really great at
scattering side quests throughout places we've already been. If so,
give us some sort of way to quickly get back there. Most
recent RPGs are pretty good at this, but not always are they quite
good enough, especially when (as in DQ8) load times are atrocious
and they drop you just outside where you want to go.
10. Random battles. If you will insist on random battles
(and I'll admit that they're not quite as awful as random drops),
give us some way to stop them when we're visiting earlier places and
lower-level enemies. There are several good ways to do this, ranging
from Earthbound's "win without fighting" to Wild ARMs' Booster Kits
to Dragon Quest VIII's Holy Water to flat-out stopping all random
battles like in FFX. But make an effort!
Well, that's my rantage for the moment. Some of these things (in
particular numbers 1, 2, and 5) can and probably should be built
right into the console: a dedicated pause button, a way to
independently redefine buttons, and instantly saving state as soon
as the console is turned off are fairly easy to pull off and can
take a lot of the pressure off gaming companies to deal with it
themselves all the time. But as for gaming companies, the most
important thing to remember is that we're people too, gaming is a
hobby, not a necessity, and we need a bit of help in getting our fun
time to remain useful and usable.
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