There are a lot of “quality of life” (QoL) features that make a game less tedious and more enjoyable. It might be hard to find a balance between making it easier for the players and making it too easy…however, there are some features that can be found in a lot, or even most games nowadays which makes gaming just more fun and accessible for newcomers.
Here are some features which I enjoy a lot and I’m glad they can be found in a lot of games. Thinking back on the old days when they weren’t a thing.. makes those games just look more like work, while this helps to ease some aspects of a game, especially since games got bigger and bigger in the past decades.
Table of Contents
Waypoint toward objectives
In a world where we got used to using navigation irl, it is nice that games offer a feature that works like that. I even love it more if you can choose what you want to track, which quest, the main quest or a specific side quest. Giving the player options if they want to even use this feature and for what purpose is great! I prefer that it is visible already just in-game.. if it is a waypoint on the minimap or above the player’s head I don’t mind, but not having to open the map to be able to see where to go next is great. Using a minimap to point the way feels less invasive than having a big arrow above your head.
This lets me think of WoW, back in the early days you had to install a mod to show you where to go for a quest, but that mod was so popular that Blizzard decided to add it to the game.
Fast travel
In my last entry I already referred back to my World of Warcraft days, but thinking back at my early experiences with fast travel might have been in WoW… although there you had to go to a flight master to go to another flight master. Gladly in most games even this system has improved that you can go from anywhere to a fast travel spot and sometimes even from anywhere on the map to anywhere. This is amazing because games get bigger maps nowadays and the time we have to play games get shorter, so it is nice to not have to travel by foot/horse or whatever all the way. It also makes for a fun gameplay mechanic to feel rewarded to unlock a specific point of the map.
Automaticly picking up items
It is so tedious to pick up every single item.. to click every corpse and choose what to pick up. So I’m glad a lot of games nowadays have an option to automatically loot corpses. And it can look so satisfying! The more options the auto-loot option gives you the better, especially if a game has a limit on how much you can carry.
Crafting with items that are in your storage
I love it when a game has a storage option but still allows you to craft things while using items in your storage. It feels so useless to check on a workbench what you need to make a craft item, go to your storage to get it.. go back to the workbench.. damn you missed one item, so back to your storage again. There are a lot of fun game loops, this one with fetching crafting items from your storage isn’t one and shouldn’t be a thing.
Easily sell/drop junk
One of the worst things in some RPGs or games with a lot of crafting is inventory management. I prefer it when a game has an auto-sort option in the inventory system, but even better is the option to automatically sell/dump all the junk you have. Based on the quality or maybe on the level you’re versus the items. For this one also counts the more options the better.
I’m sure there are many more QoL improvements I forgot while writing this piece, but I had a lot of fun remembering how far gaming has come. Not only based on graphics and how easy it is to save a game, or change the input buttons.. but also in a lot of in-game improvements. I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for us on the subject of quality of life improvements inside games.