GTA4 Wishlist

[Vinny]

- Animals. Wouldn't it be cool to see someone walking their dog down the street? Or to have a dog piss on your leg... hehe.
- Smarter cops. What kind of moron, after seeing all his companions die by plowing straight into a tank and exploding, do the exact same thing?
- Air battles! The police helicopters don't put up any resistance. Also, advertising helicopters are made of air. You can go right through them.

More coming up as I think of them...

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Quote of the week:
“A day without denial is a day you have to face.” – Calvin & Hobbes
Image of the week:

Pointless fact of the week:
All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.

Build you own city and Houses.
More indoor places
More indepth fighting Like (True Crimes of LA)
Create you own thug and Gang.

VIVA LA RAZA

Buy your own vehicles! You could then supe them up. You could make nicer cars than you could ever find on the street that way. Aircraft and tanks would not be available. Concerned about the fact that they may only last a minute or so? There should be a garage in your mansion (or a U store it, if you don't have one yet) that you will ALWAYS be able to find it in after it explodes, or if it's been out of your general area after a while.

Better soundtracks,yeah it doesn't seem too important,but it's better than your typical "More Weapons and ****" ideas.Trust me,if a goddamn tank is chasing my ratty-ass get away bike,I better hear either the Sex Pistol's "God Save the Queen" or the William Tell Overture.

[Super_Mario_1987]

Air Battles and Animals would definately be awesome, I think. Other than that, maybe a wider variety of vehicles whether it be air, on road, or on water.

Build you own hideout option. Like i'd like to build mine in a hidden area, like in the subway tunnels.

Build your own gang, i'd like to instead of having generic gang members frmed already, i'd like to build mine from scratch. Hire a few thugs to help out. Then as you spread your influence, more people join your gang.

Obliterate a gang: Ever get pisses at the Haitians or Columbians? Why not make it possible to round up your gang and go to war. Kill enough of the enemy and their numbers will dwindle. And your men will then start to patrol the area.

Arming your gang: I don't know, but help supply your men with weapons and armor and such.

Gang-car standard. Find a type of car you want your own gang to drive, and steal enough of them and you will bgin to see customized cars driven by your gang, cruising around your turf.

Custom music station. 1 station where you create a game save of some of your favorate songs you have and they get played on those stations.

I'd love it if you could create your own gang. This would not only personalise it a bit, but could introduce many new elements of the underworld to GTA.

For one thing, the current system of respect is lacking in a way. It has more to do with approval than respect. I think that fear (or notoriety might be a better word) should be included as well. So, if you run a gang that is very powerful, people will fear you. If you commit a crime, people will fear you a bit, for a while. Going on a killing spree, for example, will result in a temporary but significant fear boost. Of course, killing innocent passerby's isn't awe-inspiring. You have to kill rival gang members or cops.

Like you suggested, Tyr, other gangs should get more or less powerful. I think if you or your gang killed a lot of them, they'd be weakened. They'd bounce back eventually if left alone for a while, and from there their power would sort of fluctuate. If they were strong, they would fear you less. When they were weak, they'd be a bit more careful.

Another thing I think would be great is turf wars. The city would be divided in to small areas. You could claim an area, and your gang would make money off of it every day, from dealing and such. Of course, other gangs would have their own turfs, and would try and expand. Turf would be an important source of income, and would be one good gauge of your success. New things would be unlocked when you controlled certain areas.

You could always try and expand, but you'd have to have a few of your gang members there. If they were killed, you'd lose control of it (This is starting to remind me of 'Risk').

Enemies would try and seize it sometimes. It'd depend on how valuable the turf was, how strong your gang was, and how close it was to rival gang's turf. They try and expand too, and they will move in if they want your turf. This result in bad relations with that gang and a lot of deaths on both sides.

If you don't think it's worthwhile, you may want to abandon it. If it's too close to a powerful rival, it may not be worth the fighting. You can unclaim turf if you want. This will cause the flow of income and the attacks on your gang to cease, and your approval among that gang will go up.

I'd like more of the "hedunnit" scenarios. Meaning you dress up as a Cuban and hit the Mexicans enough times they will start to show up on Cuban territory to make war. At which point you can attack the Mexicans and gain allies for use in full scale gang wars.

Also i'd also like Tyrs idea of customizing vehichles for a gang. But I'd like more stat changes. Like bullet-proofing, upping the armor or upping the speed and handling and such. Same for weapons. I want a Python custom which I can mow down my enemies in 1 shot while i'm running.

Originally posted by El Barto:
Another thing I think would be great is turf wars. The city would be divided in to small areas. You could claim an area, and your gang would make money off of it every day, from dealing and such. Of course, other gangs would have their own turfs, and would try and expand. Turf would be an important source of income, and would be one good gauge of your success. New things would be unlocked when you controlled certain areas.

You could always try and expand, but you'd have to have a few of your gang members there. If they were killed, you'd lose control of it (This is starting to remind me of 'Risk').

Man, this is what I want in the next GTA. Claiming and expanding your turf would add a sort of strategy to the game. Combining this with the ideas of gangs being demolished could add more to the game (i.e. you could take out a gang and then take over that gang's turf). Also, I would like it if you could control your gang, like call a robbery etc. Something would be needed, such as corruption within your gang, so that you couldn't get too powerful (i.e. control the whole game area.)

I would also like multiple cities. If you are running from the cops simply hop on a plane and in no time you will be in another city with your star level down to 0. Of course, if your star level is 4 or higher the cops would follow you. Adding more cities would add more missions and more excitement to the game.

Besides more cars and guns I would like a highway. With a highway, causing death and carnage is much easier.

Finally, (yes, this list is getting a little long) I would like to be able to choose my profession. For instance, imagine if you could join the police force, take down some of your rival gang members, and then take out some of the police force. This would cause your "fear" rating to shoot through the roof.

Hmm... I'll think of more stuff later.

*Cracks knuckles* Where do I begin?

Improved game mechanics:

Tighter walking controls: Ever feel like you’re always running on ice whenever you move around on foot? (especially on uneven terrain) I certainly do. I think the controls for that could be tweaked a bit - perhaps made to emulate Zelda OoT‘s controls. They were perfect! Also, they should fix the problem that happens when one jumps onto the top of a car. Make it a more solid platform so you don‘t slide around all the time. Or at least include animations for your character loosing their balance and falling off.

Jumping: Yeah, this needs work. You know what would be great? If they made jumping resemble Star Wars Bounty Hunter’s jumping. Being able to jump straight up, any other directions - and most important of all: grabbing ledges. Better yet, make the grabbing ledges similar to Zelda. If you run into a wall and keep going for a second, the game will make you auto jump to grab on to the ledge. Or if the barrier is small enough, you’ll hop or climb over it instead.

Crawling: Crouching was good, but it still lacked movement. Reminded me of a session of Time Crisis. I think it would be neat if you could crouch and then crawl during a heated gunfight. Heck, you could crawl under cars for cover and such!

Better random traffic generator: Ever notice how you’ll frequently see a cluster of the same type of cars spawned on the roads at times? I think they could improve that to make a wider variety of cars spawn at a time.

Fix that weird double-take glitch! You know, the one where you’ll look down the road and see a car coming, look somewhere else, and then look back only to see a different car or non at all. Well, actually, it’s not a glitch - it’s the way the game is rendered. It draws things that are only in the player’s line of sight, so when you look away, if the vehicle is too far off, it may change. Still, I think they could work on that, because the distance is surprisingly short.

Improved police AI

Redo the whole wanted system: It never fails to amaze me how violent the police are. Tap their car and instantly they’ll go wailing on you with their night-sticks. Shoot first and ask questions later. I think they should put more thought into the wanted level system. For example:

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• One star: If in a vehicle, police will attempt to pull you over and give ya a ticket. A variable should be tested in the game to decide whether they take you down to the station in addition or not. If on foot, perhaps they might try to tackle you rather than bludgeon you with sticks. Once down, the same thing would happen. (I think it would be funny to see a cop sitting on your chest, writing out a ticket.) </font>
• Two stars: The heat is on now, but not as bad as in the other games. Police will now actively spawn solely for the purpose of apprehending you , but they still won’t try to kill you - yet. Should you act extremely aggressive, like punching out cops to get away, or running them (or civilians) over in your escape, then they might start shooting just to stop you. (Keep it up and then you’ll get three stars) Once they have you boxed in or subdued, you get not ticket, it’s off to the station. </font>
• Three stars: Now you’ve done it. All bets are off and the police are through being civil. If they can take you alive, super, but they won’t make it a priority. On foot, they WILL try to gun you down. From this point on, the system can work as it did in the previous games.</font>

Hiding from the fuzz: Amazing how all police have the ability to instantly spot you, even after you ditch the old car they were tailing and get a new one. I think you should be able to temporarily suspend your wanted level by hoping into a new car only when no other police unit is around to see you do this. Then, when you’re driving by a cop, the game will “flip a coin” to determine if he will actually recognize the driver as the suspect. Should you perform reckless acts in the car, or step out in sight of a cop, the suspension will immediately drop and give you back the wanted level.
As a side note, I think the same thing should work for enemy gangs to recognize you in your car.

Miscellaneous

Swimming! You can jack and hot-wire almost any vehicle in existence, you can wield any weapon with no training whatsoever, you’re the most bad-assed dude around… and you can’t swim. Granted, GTA III and VC never had any dire need for it, nor anything immediately interesting to benefit from swimming, but I still think this would be a nice feature to include - maybe even put areas on the map to cater to it. Swimming could be set up to go off of your stamina and once that runs out, you drown.

Modifiable terrain: Slightly modifiable, slightly. I think it would be neat to see chunks of earth be blown away via grenade or rocket. Parts of buildings maybe, as their debris would fall on to the roads and cause havoc. This might be beneficial for a little bit, but it would soon become a problem. The same for roads. Perhaps a limit should be placed on damage done to buildings and roads. Just like with fires, a utility vehicle would come along and repair the damage and clear away the junk.

Seasons: Spring, summer, fall, winter. N’uff said.

Longer day/nights This is a big maybe. For me sometimes time just changes too quickly. Perhaps making each clock minute equal two seconds instead of one would work.

NPC variety: I grow tired of seeing the same character model for various NPC’s. They should make two or three different skins for police officers, firemen, etc. Vice City started to do that with the gangs, but they could take it a little further.

Custom character: And why not? I’d love to put myself into a game. As an even added bonus, once you complete certain percentages of the game (or find the appropriate cheat codes) you could open up new custom features, like creating playable characters that aren’t… human. Further options could include the armament of “powers” like gliding or climbing walls. Though the addition of such features to the character would have to be balanced out in some form. Perhaps with certain features, all citizens would run away from the monstrous player and cops would shoot on sight. Or maybe missions could not be completed with them active. But I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: How cool would it be to create Raziel, the Soul Reaver and put him down in this game?

Can’t think of any more at the moment, but I know I have some. All of the posts about turf wars and gangs are all great ones, too, so I mentally add them to my list. ^_^

Ok, this post is mostly directed to Fenix, not in a bad way but in a good one.

Originally posted by Fenix:
Better random traffic generator: Ever notice how you’ll frequently see a cluster of the same type of cars spawned on the roads at times? I think they could improve that to make a wider variety of cars spawn at a time.

Hah, my "GTA:VC Car Theory" holds strong!

I agree with many of your problems with the game Fenix, but being a programmer myself I know that some glitches are unavoidable. Quite possibly, everything we have said in this topic could have been in the game at one stage but even more serious glitches than we know today caused them to be removed.

For instance, a glitch that I think may have happened with the dieing out of a gang would be that it would keep creating a gang member when a gang was too low and then you would have 80 Haitians in one spot. The way I think the game works is that whenever you move from a certain point the game calculates how many people, cars, police, etc are in your certain area. Then it finds where you are (for instance, there are almost no cops on the beach unless you are being chased). This "searching for you" dictates what kind of people, cars, and other things the game creates so that they appear in your line of sight. This works perfectly so that you never see Haitians or Cubans outside of the Malibu.

The movement problem that you have is an understandable one. Yes we all loved the movement of Link in OoT, but that was with a joystick, not a joypad. Joysticks offer a wider range of movement and have the ability to test pressure. I feel that unless there is a new controller created we will have to deal with the current movement. Hopefully the sliding effects will become less frequent.

Crawling could be put in the game very easily. If they could mirror the crawling available in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of liberty, I would be a happy man.

I think that your star system is better than what the current one is. I would like giving out of tickets because I think it would be funny to have to go to court to try to get it reduced.

There are times when I would want the ability to “hide” from the cops so to speak and times when I wouldn’t. Sometimes I like playing cat and mouse with the cops. Hell, my friends and I play “who can last the longest” when we have 4 stars or higher (much more fun when you got a couple beers in your system). This is why I wouldn’t like to be able to hide from the cops.

Seasons would be fun, imagine hiding in a pile of leaves in autumn, throwing snowballs at cops in winter, having allergies in spring (I know it doesn’t sound like fun, but hiding from the cops would be a lot harder), and chilling at the beach in summer. Creating seasons would add more options to the games such as ice skating, working as a gardener, etc and would make the game more fun.

Swimming would be tons of fun, but as you said there isn’t much need for it right now. If they added more missions that included the use of water (like planting bombs on the bottom of your enemies’ boats) then swimming would be awesome, but right now I’m not missing it.

I definitely agree with the changing of bodies/faces (both NPC’s and yourself.) This wouldn’t be too hard, and a randomized system could change it every time. This might cause glitches, but I wouldn’t mind killing a body of a Cuban with the head of a white guy, even if it would freak me out a little.

Anything I didn’t mention I don’t really have a stance on due to the fact that I either don’t care about it or it seems fine to me. Great ideas everyone, keep up the good work.

Ah… That makes sense… some, not a lot. Not yet… I’m also aspiring to be a video game programmer Still learning the basics though. I hate COBOL…

Originally posted by God of Death:
The movement problem that you have is an understandable one. Yes we all loved the movement of Link in OoT, but that was with a joystick, not a joypad.

But what about the PS2 analog sticks? Aren’t they the same thing? That’s what I was suggesting because I normally use that for moving the character around. Old habit I suppose.

Originally posted by God of Death:
Sometimes I like playing cat and mouse with the cops. Hell, my friends and I play “who can last the longest” when we have 4 stars or higher (much more fun when you got a couple beers in your system). This is why I wouldn’t like to be able to hide from the cops.

Ah, I knew I forgot to mention something. Yeah, I agree, I’ve done it before (sans alcohol) and it can be pretty interesting to say the least. Therefore this hiding method would only work at the lower levels of the wanted spectrum. For the first two… and maybe the third as well. But defiantly no more than that. Once you get enough attention drawn to you, no amount of hiding will make them forget.

Another comment on the seasons, imagine jacking a toboggan! Or using a rake for a weapon. The snowballs sound like a great idea too! If you threw one correctly down a big enough hill, it could grow larger and larger…

PS2 analog sticks might work, but I don't like the unconfortability of stretching out my thumb just to look around in some games let alone stretching my thumb for the entirety of a game. Right now it doesn't bother me much at all. Worse comes to worse I just hijack a comet to speed my way around.

Connecting my idea of multiple cities with Legion's idea of seasons I came up with a brand new idea. If you are in a northern city during winter simply "migrate" south for the season and enjoy summer. This would give you the ability to "choose" what season you wanted to be in.

Another thing I would like to see is greater interaction with your surroundings. Like Legion said, changeable terrain would be awesome, but I want to go deeper than that. I want to be able to pick up a piece of debree and chuck it at someone. I want to be able to pick up stop signs and be able to use them as weapons. If we could be able to interact with the surroudings in GTA:VC like we could in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games it would make the game much better.

Alot of the gangs in VC were pushovers. I remember being wary of getting near St. Marks because the Mafia would shred my car with rifle shots.

In VC I just waltzed in and ***** slapped everyone. I want some real competition. Maybe take it to the next level with snipers and flame thrower equiped gangs.

Realsim to your weapons. If i'm swinging a sword i'd like to cut my enemies to bit or in half. If I stab a ped with a screwdriver, I want them to run away bleeding with me right behind them as they begin to slow down before they die of blood loss.

I'd like a breaking news bullitin for when I go on rampages.

Smarter cops. Blockades are fine unless you can drive to the side. I don't want some cop car ramming my ass for a few miles. I'd like them to resort to firing at my tires and actually forcing me off the road.