Save and exit to desktop straight away with no going back to the main menu before. I'm looking at you Dark Souls series! It's like the developers have never used a computer for anything not related to writing code before.

Chromatic Aberration toggle

Motion Blur toggle

Distortion Effect toggle

Vignette Effect toggle

FoV slider

DLSS/FSR implementation (cause fuck TAA, like really, really fuck TAA and its smear)

Oh, and Head Bobbing/Camera Shake slider, forgot about these

Adding a reboot button is ONLY necessary if the game isn't made correctly. There is otherwise no reason to ever need to restart the game. I would see the addition of a restart option as lazy or an admission of failure by the dev.

I just want a exit to desktop button always available. I don't always have time to go all the way back to the title screen just to edit out.

Give me a way to replay cutscenes, and history of dialog.

System clock in the top right corner.

Multiplayer games should have toggles to allow more than 4 people. Why do we need to install mods or change a 4 to a 6 in some config file?

This obviously doesn't work for games like It Takes Two where more than 2 players would be senseless, but your survivalcraft game shouldn't be limited in the same way.

Another commented said Fully Remappable Controls, but I want to foot stomp it. On PC games, I use EDSF instead of WASD, but if some controls can't be remapped and they overlap with EDSF then I won't play the game.

On console, I fucking hate that Elden Ring maps "crouch/sneak" to pushing down on the movement stick. I'm furiously fighting for my fucking life against a boss that attacks every 0.7 seconds. I'm moving that stick as fast as I can, which means I'm pushing hard on it. It sucks to be trying to run away from an attack but then start crouching and sneaking away from a 40ft tall axe coming down on you.

Gameplay settings menus that allow you to turn off gameplay mechanisms you simply don't enjoy, or tune them.

I'm talking about ones that are like one line of code being set to true instead of false etc. That type of thing.

Basically things like that and the Atomfall gameplay/difficulty settings menu

I don't give a fuck if some pretentious asses "artistic vision" requires the player to backtrack half way across a level on every death or thinks a shitty minigame should be played no less than 153 times every play through. I want to be able to just turn off the unfun shit, and leave on the fun shit.

This is a game. I don't care if the developer thinks X Y or Z adds to the experience. If I don't, within reason I should just be able to turn it off.

Games should not have preset color options for people with colorblindness. Games almost NEVER do them correctly or offer good enough options. They should just give users full-blown color pickers for whatever gameplay elements require them and let users decide for themselves what colors work best.

I also think ANY game should have a “full potato” mode capable of running in older computers with NONE of the fancy graphics stuff that we have access to today, despite having a decent computer now.

Problem is that the fancy graphics stuff isn't just additive.
For example, raytracing is actually relatively simple to implement, since you just make light behave like it does in real-world physics, according to a couple relatively straightforward rules and material properties.
Lighting without raytracing involves tons of ~~smokes and mirrors~~ hacks and workarounds. For example, mirrors were often faked by building the same room behind the wall, with everything inverted, including the player character's animations.
So, making a game with potato graphics typically requires building a second version of the game.

Of course, there can be a mode that does just turn off the additive stuff, so only that which does not require changing the game implementation. But that can just be one of the graphics presets...

Any game with a free cam should have the option to turn off 3d fly. Trying to perfectly position a camera while having to constantly turn in order to not go up or down while trying to slightly reposition has got to be one of the most annoying things.

Games with third person peaking should have server options for first person only.

in general: settings which have multiple levels, display it as a slider so I can visually see which ones are actually maxed out and which arent. It's insanity when most settings have off/low/med/high/higher and randomly some of them have additional levels like epic/ultra/psycho/gigaultrapseudobullshit. You have to go each and everyone through to figure out which have higher settings. Now, this is not a flex, my system can't run new games on gigaultrapseudobullshitultra++, but older ones? sure.

for fps & tps games: FOV.

otherwise, in no particular order, option to toggle off entirely:

• motion blur
• chromatic aberration

otherwise, must haves:

• subtitles on/off
• master volume/music/sfx/dialogue as separate sliders.
• don't default volume to max, this is instant ear explosion if you happen to use different audio devices

Mute while in background aka stfu I'm tabbed out ffs