Here are five relatively minor items that can, in my opinion, drastically improve the gameplay experience.
1. Progress tracker for achievements, trophies, and unlocks
Nearly every game released these days has at least one achievement or trophy along these lines: "Use Super Punch 100 times," "Kill 250 Evil Bandits," "Jump off 100 buildings." Even if you don't care about trophies or achievements, games sometimes give bonuses for reaching these goals, like an upgraded spell or bonus to weapon damage. While these challenges can be either fun or boring depending on the game, one thing that always improves the process is a way to track your progress. While this would seem like a no-brainer, a surprising number of games don't allow the player to track these statistics. (Fortunately, the developers often improve -- in Mass Effect there was no way to track weapon or power kills, but Mass Effect 2 and 3 both included progress counters.)
Psychologically, it's easier to work through a tedious process by knowing how far along you are. Also, in some cases it can be difficult to judge whether a given technique was executed correctly, and being able to check whether it was counted can prevent a lot of frustration. Finally, visibly displaying progress helps allay concerns about whether a trophy or achievement is glitched. "I'm sure I've killed 100 enemies with Lightning Bolt by now... why hasn't it unlocked yet? Am I just wasting my time here?" Since the game has to keep track somewhere, why not make it visible to the player?
2. In-game map for collectibles
Whether they're orbs, coins, flags, gems, wanted posters, or crabs, many games have objects scattered throughout the levels for players to collect. Sometimes these items provide background information to the story (such as the audio diaries in Bioshock and the dead drops in inFamous), others upgrade health, magic, or other statistics (Heart Pieces in The Legend of Zelda series, lizards and fruits in Shadow of the Colossus, apples in 3D Dot Game Heroes), and some serve no purpose whatsoever except to count towards the elusive 100% completion, 1000 Gamerscore, or Platinum Trophy.
Collectibles are a hotly debated subject in the gaming community, with some people enjoying the incentive to fully explore the game world, and others considering finding them all a frustrating ordeal. One game that received a lot of criticism was inFamous, which required players to collect 350 Blast Shards scattered throughout the city. Nearby Blast Shards could be seen on the minimap by pressing a "radar" button, but they showed up as a dark blue dot on an otherwise dark map which could be easily missed. The sheer number of the shards, lack of any way to display them all on the main map, and the obscure locations of some of them made finding all of them a nightmare. Fortunately, developer Sucker Punch responded to the criticisms, and inFamous 2 featured a much more forgiving system. Similarly, Assassin's Creed II contained 100 feathers to find, many of which were difficult to find without a guide. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood improved upon its predecessor by allowing the player to purchase maps which revealed the locations of its collectibles (feathers and flags).
3. Customizable control scheme
Game controllers have come a long way since the days of the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Nearly every console generation has more buttons than ever before. A feature that I wish more games had was the ability to reassign which buttons do what. Sometimes, the given inputs are physically difficult, or a game will inexplicably map actions to unintuitive buttons (such as pressing B to jump when most other games use A). This can cause a lot of frustration and accidental deaths if the game does not allow the player to change the jump button back to the more familiar A. Some games, such as Borderlands, attempt to avoid this problem by offering three or four different schemes, but none are as customizable as simply allowing players to change the button mapping as they please. Are developers worried that custom control schemes will overwhelm newer players? If so, feel free to tuck the option in an "advanced" menu, but please allow us to change the default!
4. Manual saves
Some games only use autosaves and do not allow the player to save manually. Mafia II, for instance, only saves at checkpoints during missions. Money earned, miles driven, or other progress while "free roaming" is simply lost unless you begin a mission and progress to a checkpoint. I understand limiting saves to certain save points or checkpoints to make the game more challenging (for example, requiring the player to complete an entire stealth section flawlessly makes it much more difficult than if you can simply save after each enemy you bypass). But I wish these games would at least include a "suspend" option (which is essentially a long-term pause) in case something comes up and the player must quit suddenly. Having to redo an hour of gameplay due to a sudden emergency is very frustrating.
Even worse, sometimes autosaves can become corrupted due to freezes or bugs. I like to save frequently for peace of mind, and with games like this it's impossible. I lost my entire first Assassin's Creed Brotherhood game near the very end when my PS3 froze during a cutscene and corrupted my autosave. I had to start the entire game over again. (And now I back up my saves frequently with the Playstation Plus cloud storage.)
5. Subtitles
Sometimes it can get kind of noisy around my living space, and sometimes the characters just don't talk clearly. I don't like missing dialogue while gaming, especially in a story-heavy game like Assassin's Creed, so I find it disheartening when games don't give the option for subtitles. And what about gamers who are deaf or hard of hearing? Apparently some people think that subtitles interrupt the "cinematic" experience, but as someone who's accustomed to watching foreign films and subtitled anime, I don't have that problem. Please, at least give us the option. (Fortunately, the later games in the Assassin's Creed series do have subtitles.)
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I am admittedly not a developer, but I think most of these could be implemented without too much trouble. In my experience, a game with these features easily rises from mediocre to excellent.
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