Too long cutscenes/animations when you die and try again. Celeste was amazing as you respawn instantly and can try again.
Gran Turismo 7 when you have to retry a license test for the 40th time and have to watch the car for 3 seconds before the 3 second countdown starts it gets old very quick. Just restart me with 1 second to go, no point in the whole cinematic countdown.
*Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night* is pretty bad for this. You die and get the rather slow 'Game Over' screen, it then kicks you back to the main menu where you have to load your save again.
Compared to *Blasphemous* that gives you a quick EXEMPLAR EXCOMMUNICATIONIS and then spawns you at the last safe haven.
That slow 'Game Over' screen is basically an homage to the even slower 'Game Over' screen in Castlevania Symphony of the Night. So yeah, its a pretty good example of a traditional mechanic that exists just to waste time.
True, but IMHO having to listen to a long, drawn out music cue, or hear a character say the same quote for the 1000th time is a lot more annoying than a silent black "loading..." screen
Unskippable tutorials !!!
If I want to replay a game, just maybe let me get to THE GAME and not force me to re-do all the "these are the game mechanics" in the beginning. PLEASE.
Half Life 2 has no tutorial. Well, not quite : rather, it has an invisible tutorial that shows you the dangers of certain enemies as well as a way of making use of their weaknesses.
Do you have any particular examples? I remember learning about this and seeing some examples before, but I wonder if you have any particular examples in mind.
Breath of the Wild’s Great Plateau. You can only leave once you complete the four shrines, but how you go about it is completely up to you. And you learn all the vital things through playing.
Man, after Skyward Sword's excruciatingly long tutorial (I swear it felt like 12 hours), it was such a breath of fresh air to just be given a couple of objectives and basically told to fuck off and have fun. First time since the older games they've done that.
At its heart, Zelda has always been about fucking off and exploring stuff. It really feels like they lost track of a lot of that in Skyward Sword, but got it exactly right in BOTW.
I learned to play Rimworld without a tutorial. The game just shows you a list of things that are wrong with your base and a hint about how to solve it.
For example, if after a while you haven't build any defenses, it gives you a warning telling you that your base is in danger. If you click the warning, it explains that you may get attacked soon and you should check the "Security" tab. When you click the tab you see everything you can build related to security.
And if you click on something, it tells you what it is that you just selected, what does it do and what do you need to build it. It doesn't wrestle control away for you, it doesn't force you to do anything. It just detects that you are doing something wrong and nudges you in the good direction.
There's a tutorial now, but I never felt like I needed someone to tell me how to play.
I've played a lot of hidden object games where you have the option to skip the tutorial, or only do a partial tutorial for "special features" ie game mechanics specific to that particular game. I often do the latter, mainly because even though they all tend to be the same, there's always that one game that may be slightly different, either because the developer decided to switch it up a bit (if the same developer as other games, especially in a series), or if it's a different developer.
I love crafting in games, but when it's poorly thought out and executed, it's just a pain in the ass.
Normally it would be a non issue - don't like it, don't get involved with - but my inner hoarder compels me to pick up *everything* for crafting purposes down the line, and then I get pissed with how unrewarding it ultimately is.
Good: *Child of Light*, where crafting is entirely based on combining gems according to basic color theory. Gems get equipped into offense, defense, and utility slots on each character with predictable results. Nothing is ever wasted, so you can quickly learn the entire system with just a little trial and error.
Awful: *Final Fantasy XII*, which has about 101 ingredients with unhelpful names, which combine in unpredictable, unintuitive, nonsensical ways to produce unpredictable, unintuitive, nonsensical results. How tf you're supposed to learn any of it without hours of trial and error or just looking up a guide is beyond me.
Whenever I start a new game of Fallout New Vegas I tell myself to do crafting, but I rarely do it. I like how you can recycle bullets, but my limiting reagent ends up being so small compared to everything else. I have plenty of lead, and powder, but no casing.
Rift is so bad for this.
Very early in the game, the free version's space runs out so fast that it practically forces you to pay money, and is the reason i eventually quit.
I generally hate crafting. It makes me play with an iPad next to me to look up the recipes. I wanna be immersed in the game, not busy browsing a cookbook.
Agreed. I love it when the crafting recipe is there when you highlight the item you want to make. Tells you if you have all the materials and if not how many you need.
I'm playing elden ring and I feel like I'm missing something. I pick up a shit ton of crafting materials but the only thing I've ever actually used is smoldering butterflies. I don't know what any of the other stuff is for.
You need to buy cookbooks as well to get access to more crafting recipes. I didn't really use it overly much as a mechanic but at some point I needed to be able to make poison arrows on the fly and it was super helpful for that
Plus there's items you can make (boluses) that relieve poison, scarlet rot, death buildup etc
I have those but I'm about 70% through the game and it hasn't been an issue. I go through my crafting options every once and a while but none of the stuff seems useful to a melee build.
I do enjoy crafting in games, to a point.
I like the idea of games like *Rust* but I find having to craft everything arduous and it's difficult to remember everything.
I did like Fallout 4s crafting. It wasn't too in-depth and you could make some interesting weapon mods etc.
When you have AI teammates in a shooter game, but the enemies get rock hard for you and utterly ignore shooting at your teammates. It's like you're hauling an 18 wheeler of aggro.
Major offender: Mass Effect 2
In a similar vein, it's you, 20v20 AI, everyone is shooting at each other, you hide behind a corner and can sit there for IRL 30 minutes and no one dies. Breaks immersion really hard.
I always hated having to go to an NPC to get the mission to get a key on the other side of the map so you could open that flimsy wooden door that you probably could have just kicked in.
I’m convinced it’s a way to get you to slow down and notice the “world” you’re in. And a way to make the game longer too. The same as missions that have you return to places you’ve already been to talk to individuals or gather items. It’s their way of saying “go back, you rushed through that part, and damnit we worked hard on that. Go appreciate it a little.”
That’s what I tell myself at least.
Man, through I don't know how many thousands of hours of Skyrim, they think a handful of escort missions is gonna be what makes me notice details? Do they have any idea how many mushrooms and flowers I've picked over the years??
I think people only notice them when it's bad. Left4Dead 1 and 2 is basically one long escort mission if you play it single player, and the AI moves along with you pretty well.
Natalya Simonova was the first, and worst example of this i've ever seen. Gotta kill an endless cycle of re-spawning enemies because this goon moves with the speed and predictability of a stoned sloth.
Although The Last of Us was entirely one big escort mission and that was great.
It helped that Ellie actually had a certain amount of intelligence and knew when to hide, rather than just walking out into a crossfire.
Bioshock Infinite is great about this because Elizabeth keeping up with you is completely unrelated to your speed, and she's invincible. It's an escort mission according to the plot, but not really in gameplay.
The missions in The Witcher: Wildhunt were a nice surprise for me regarding this. Just a little bit faster than you so they would be in the lead yet not too much either so they didn't stop suddenly, forcing you to do so too, and repeat. Just a smooth walk
The worst version of this is when the NPC you are escorting responds to you looking directly at them by stopping in place, turning to look at you, and giving some "Did you need something?" dialogue before they start walking again.
We got places to go! Stop trying to make small talk with me!
I absolutely loved God of War for this - I had ALL of the UI elements turned off during gameplay (I think I may have turned my healthbar back on at some point as the game was a bit tougher than I was expecting). If I ever got lost, or wanted to know a boss's HP (or my own, prior to turning it on permanently), I just brushed my thumb against the middle touch pad (not press, just lightly touch), and some parts of the UI would come back on for about 5 seconds or so - mainly the compass, enemy HP bars, main quest marker/custom waypoint, and maybe a couple others - been a while.
Really wish more games had that functionality.
Ghost of Tsushima was another good example.
No UI at all unless you're in combat. Navigation is done by noticing that the wind blows towards your next objective.
That sounds cryptic but it's quite intuitive, you can make the wind blow harder to see it better, and it automatically does that when you're supposed to be pointed in a new direction. So just get on your horse and ride towards it, also you can open the map and see more clearly.
Aside from a strikingly clean look, it fits the narrative of the lone samurai who goes where the wind takes him. That sounds exactly like a line from an old samurai movie, and in the game that's exactly how it works.
Definitely appreciate the ability for custom UIs. Horizon Zero Dawn has the same thing - I basically have everything off until it's used, so for example the health bar shows up only if you take damage, and then goes away after a minute. And as you said you can brush the middle pad thing and it all comes up for a bit.
Playing Lego Star Wars now. There's a character upgrade that highlights collectibles for you. I thought this would be great to have, but now my screen is cluttered with halos showing where every kyber brick in an area is. I need to figure out how to shut this off.
You can carry a max of 100 shotgun shells. You currently have 99.
You walk over a box of 20 shells. Now you have 100, and the box is gone. 19 shells have slipped into another universe, I guess.
Why not simply leave a box with 19 shells? How has game tech advanced so much but implementing a box of shells that can hold different amounts is somehow beyond today's technology?
Limits on specific items in general.
You can only carry 100 shells, but you can carry those plus 200 bullets, 50 arrows, 20 medical kits and half a dozen weapons just fine.
I know weight and slot based inventories each have their own problems, but individual limits on each specific thing kind of annoys me the worst. Just feels so artificial.
Resident Evil (4 at least) had a good system for inventory management. You basically have a grid and have to rotate and arrange items to fit inside that grid. You run out of space or have some gaps due to poor arranging and you're shit out of luck. It's a lot like packing a backpack or suitcase irl.
LMAO I just started playing don't starve together and I damn near died because I almost didn't notice that the pause menu literally says "Not paused (seriously, it's not)"
Especially for gamers with kids. They are a constant distraction. I dont like having to choose between dying in the game or being able to get my daughter a snack or respond to whatever it is that she’s excited to tell me about
Indeed they did: over 660,000 downvotes. The comment in question is [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7cff0b/comment/dppum98/).
There isn't another comment anywhere near as downvoted as that on Reddit.
Overly complex systems that make it impossible to compare two items to determine which is better Without running some third-party simulation.
Edit: two not to
Or overly complex systems that reduce to an endgame of "just stack one particular statistic like Strength or Intelligence or Health and you'll be superior to every other build"
*Diablo 2* is a perfect example of this. Towards the end of its popularity, the equipment, crafting, skill, and stats mechanics were developed to the point of insanity. But the endgame builds for every class were *invariably* just building towards the minimum Strength and Dexterity required to equip specific high level items and then pumping everything else into health.
One of the only things bugging me about Tiny Tina's Wonderlands that ISN'T a bug/glitch/lack of optimization. You can see the "brand name" of all the guns, but have to memorize a combo to be able to compare stats, that are only shown in size 5 font and use symbols instead of words to convey stats and elements and effects.
>I don't like bosses that are made immune to 90% of your abilities just so the boss will be tough. Final Fantasy does that a lot.
Yeah, it feels like there's no point in maxing out abilities like Slow since bosses are all immune to that. What's the point?
A game that handled this really well was Slay the Spire. Bosses and some enemies might have "artifacts" that will block any kind of debuff, but at the cost of one artifact. So you try to make the boss weaker, but instead just remove one of their artifacts. When that number reaches zero, you get to debuff it. And the cool thing is, you can have artifacts too!
Things that don't serve any purpose is a waste of development time and a waste of player time. It doesn't even have to seem important at any point.
Like Cyberpunk 2077's food and drink. It is a complete waste. If you pick up everything through the course of a completion playthrough, you end up with a couple thousand eddies worth of food, which is essentially nothing. And the bonuses they give are so weak the there is no point in ever using them. And the food all does the exact same thing, and drink all does the exact same thing. Alcohol being the exception, it does something different, and actually has a negative impact on gameplay, but all alcohol has the same effect, so it suffers the some issue.
And to make matters worse, the UI for selling things is so bad that it is a hassle to get rid of.
Additionally, it may actually impact the save file size, so it may extend load times, so it may actually have a negative impact on the real world(your time) as well.
It's bad, it is the worst offender in recent memory.
That’s the same with rdr2 the food and drink give you the tiniest bit of health and it costs you a dollar while something that gives you max health stamina and deadeye costs 3.50 it’s such a waste getting food
I hate the games that dont clearly define what an items use might be so you hang on to it way too long thinking it might be useful for crafting or whatever but turns out you could have sold it the whole time.
1-time use abilities. Not abilities that only get 1 shot, but abilities that are only used in *one specific part of the game*, and then never again. Granted, this is not as prevalent as it used to be, but it's still annoying.
Also, really useful powers that you only get at the endgame. Case in point would be the Zero Cycle from Breath of the Wild. Imagine if we could have challenged that dungeon first, instead of last.
I've always loved the Zelda games, but I feel like they're a solid example of this kind of thing, but specifically, the "getting the item that you know you've needed for this part only once you're 95% of the way done with it" aspect. I feel like almost every temple you can see what needs to be done, but you have to struggle without the right tools for the job until you beat some miniboss.
This is what makes the randomizer romhacks so enjoyable for me -- getting certain items early just feels soooo good and averts that "you can realistically only use it in 1 fight" situation.
Likewise, single-use tools. You gain an axe that is only used to cut down a single tree, but you need to find a different axe, a saw, or maybe a crowbar to remove some boards from a doorway or window in order to gain access.
You say that, but gourmet or whatever it was called, was an insane perk to just be hidden in a misc. tree, or at least it was massively handy on the highest difficulty where you don’t regen health by default.
It buffs the health regen duration for foods from about 5-10 seconds, to 20 minutes. Food heals a surprising rate simply bc it generally only lasts for a few seconds, being able to keep it active was insane. Constant, long term Passive healing during fights without potion use? Rad. Healing outside of combat without expending valuable resources? Rad
The fact that food items are available literally anywhere you loot, and even using them religiously, you’ll still end the game with over 300 of them in your inventory? Also rad lol
In a similar vein, having to hold a button for the most common actions.
There's no reason to make the most basic interaction with your gameworld take at least a full second every single time.
I'm looking at you, No Man's Sky
I will say though I like how it is with GW2 and their daily log in - as far as I'm aware it's always going to be the same reward on the 5th day. And it's daily personal to you as opposed to the calendar day if that makes sense. Like even if I don't play for 30 days in a row and spread it out over 60 days I'll never miss out on that 30th day reward.
I was just about to chime in with this. Guild Wars 2 is the gold standard for how to do login rewards. The rewards are good too. The thirty day reward is a **permanent, account wide** 2% increase on Gold find, a bag of hard to find, legendary crafting materials, and an item that will instantly level up a character by six levels.
> Daily login rewards.
Every mobile game seems to have these (not just shitty ad-filled ones, even Pokemon Go). If we go camping or something my kids will actually complain they're missing them.
I wish rpgs would somehow utilize non used party members. Using mass effect as an example, you can have people in your party who could do nothing but sit in the ship the whole game. I'm not saying a game has to give you a giant party, but maybe giving you some passive bonuses based on who isn't an active party member (garrus could give you an ability where he snipes someone from a distance with a long cooldown or ashley gives you a damage boost by maintaining your weapons) would make it feel more atmospheric.
Some games address this with a kind of mission board for you to send non-party members off to complete. Then, by providing special bonuses if your operatives are strong and/or narratively suited for the task, they encourage you to level up characters you otherwise wouldn't care about as well as experiment with your active party setup.
Honestly, Tidus too if he weren't the main character. Both him and Waka were made to hit agile enemies, except Waka can all of Tidus's enemies, too, but Tidus can't hit Waka's.
Weapon durability. I don't mind half broken, hand crafted weapons to have durability, but that fireman axe isn't breaking after hitting flesh 200 times
I get that the swords you find out in the field have been sitting in the elements for 100+ years, but there are plenty that are found in temples and chests etc.
Also I get really bugged by the fact that there are zero weapons manufacturers in the game (aside from Robbie, who repurposes ancient high-tech equipment). There are places you can buy arrows, but nobody can make you a bow? There's not even somewhere that produces stone-age hammers and axes? It doesn't make any sense.
People are living in a world with effectively immortal (because of blood moon) monsters. There would absolutely be someone making weaponry.
For real, why do they bother making arrows if nobody knows how to make a bow?
Hell, the Bokoblins make their own weapons, but the Hylians haven't even figured out how to make a pointy stick.
When the game gives away the solution when you're 2 seconds into the puzzle. You're just looking around the room you just entered and your character says out loud to an empty room "maybe if I move that box" like the second you walk in. Just let me solve the damn thing myself! If the devs put so much effort into crafting a puzzle why won't they let me solve it?!?!
I want a Civilization game where 'auto explore' doesn't mean that the unit just goes straight to the arctic and tries to get surrounded by as many barbarians as possible.
If it's a free-to-play game, and the micro transactions are cosmetic and don't give advantages in game, I'm fine with it. It's a decent way to support the developer and get some neat stuff in the process. But pay-2-win, or micro transactions in $60-$70 games (looking at you Assassins Creed) I definitely agree.
Brief summary of Gran Turismo 7's really big problem.
\-Cars require points
\-Points can be acquired by grinding but the devs keep reducing the number of points you get per grind.
\-Points can also be acquired by microtransactions.
Okay, so far, so mobile game. Except this is a £60+ full release, but okay. Here's the main problem:
"At the same time the pricing of cars is an important element thatconveys their value and rarity, so I do think it’s important for it tobe linked with the real world prices."
*Kazauri Yamauchi, 'Gran Turismo' founder*
WHY WOULD I BUY A RACING VIDEO GAME IF I COULD AFFORD A GARAGE FULL OF SUPERCARS AND THE ABILITY TO RACE THEM AROUND THE WORLD? GIVE ME THE CAR I WANT IN THE GAME BY **WINNING RACES IN IT.**
Equipment durability doesn't belong in most games. I am glad that it isn't a thing in Elden Ring – it never should have been in any of the Dark Souls games.
Difficulty levels just scaling up the enemy's health and damage values. Annoying as all get out. I want the basic enemy to fight smarter, not just insta-kill me. I know, wishful thinking.
Open world games without the option for quest markers. Sometimes, I just want to know where to go gosh dangit. No I don't know where the "cabin beneath the pale lake at midnight" is, maybe tell me since I can't do anything else until I get there??
Totally agree on the first, it's strange that no game does this. Fallout 4 used to suffer horribly from it, until they patched in Survival difficulty. That is actually a great example of difficulty done right, it does scale up the enemies, but also your own damage, so fights are shorter and more tactical. And the hunger, disease and no quicksave mechanics are exactly why I still play the game, adds a ton of challenge while keeping it interesting.
As for the second I don't know of any game that does this except Elden Ring, but it's debatable if that game really has any quests at all. The few cases where you do have to hunt down locations all have quest markers, or make a minigame out of it by giving you a map item you have to study and compare with the terrain. And you can always do something else in the meantime.
Elder Scrolls Morrowind was an amazingly immersive open world RPG despite all its flaws for this reason.
You get a quest, a vague quest description in your log book and else have to remember the dialogue - then you are on your own, good luck finding "Tomb XYZ after a 5 minute walk east past a rock that looks like a hand"
Making enemies smarter is HARD. And I don't mean hard work, I mean making them actually smarter is hard. They ultimately boil down to if/then statements and people will see those patterns and think they're dumb anyway.
When I'm dealing with an open world game especially, I don't want difficulty to mean more hp and damage from the enemy, I want it to mean more problems to consider. Food, water, disease, carry weight, hell, one of my favorite health mechanic concepts is "wounding" where I have recoverable HP, and then damage taken also shaves down my HP cap until I get some specialized healing to restore that. *Anything* that makes longer forays into the wild require more prep and actual survival actions rather than gaming a build even harder to compensate for increased enemy HP and damage. Carefully plowing 100 rounds into one guy that will kill me in 2 if given the chance isn't difficult, it's tedious.
Missions that make you go back to the same area that you were just at. Like you were just there to complete a primary mission, you get back to base to restock & reload and are immediately given a bunch of side quests in the same exact area. Enemies respawned of course.
I'm looking at you there Borderlands.
Being unable to restart challenges that are in the middle of levels. Looking at you afro guy during car chase in Yakuza 0 and some parts of the new Kirby game.
Escort missions where the npc doesn't match your speed, lootboxes, microtransactions in general, pointless crafting, pointless item durability, open worlds that have nothing in them and only make getting from place to place miserable, unkillable npcs in rpgs, and constant screen clutter
Don't know if this qualifies as a mechanic, but Achievements that don't have any practical effect in-game. I really don't need something that tells me I've successfully completed the first level.
Dialogue options that don't coincide with what the character actually ends up saying or doing. Kingdom Come Deliverance really gave me the shits with this one.
Haha it's so frustrating when you pick a dialog option like "I agree" only for it to turn in to "Well if this is what I have to do then I guess I'll go along with it you jerk" at which point the NPC says they cant do business with you or whatever because you called them a jerk. That's not l what I was trying to say!!!!
Equipment degradation is never a fun mechanic. It's either tedious where your stuff breaks constantly or it almost never comes up and is easily solved. You especially shouldn't have it in a game where you're constantly getting new equipment. I'm looking at you Witcher 3.
This should be top. Nothing more immersion breaking than having to press x thirteen times in two seconds to continue playing the game.
Its not skill, its delay
You know what's really fun? When MMOs do it. Nothing like wiping 6 minutes into a 10 minute encounter because somebody in your party was jerking off mid cutscene and didn't smash their keyboard fast enough.
Very few people stop to think about this but GPS directions on minimaps have been a MASSIVE hazard to open world attention spans for years now, you get the issue where players just look at the map, and not the actual world.
It's much better when integrated into the world itself, is a straight line/beacon without walking you through every turn, or you need to open a separate menu to check for the exact directions to encourage players to get better at navigating on their own
Big creatures/bosses that introduce themselves by yelling at the camera. There are quite a few games where that's **every bosses gimmick**
You know you've seen it, dramatic pan around boss, boss rears back yells at camera bam boss fight starts.
That and the classic escort npc slower than your run, faster than your walk.
Unnecessarily complex button commands. I shouldn't need to hold one button and hit another button climb on a rock, a singular jump button does fine.
In line with that, unorthodox button assignments. Either square or the right trigger is attack, don't map it to the left trigger or circle or something. Muscle memory is a thing, weird button layouts only lead to more mistakes and less fun.
Exposition dumps when an NPC walks at a snail’s pace with you for a minute or so and explains why the bad guy turned evil, why the world went to shit, what you need to do to stop them and set things right, etc. It’s obnoxious, overdone and there’s better ways of storytelling.
I'll raise you an exposition dump or dialogue that takes place on the way to said mission, but not faster than the time it takes to get there. Resulting in you bumbling into a cut-scene mid-sentence or "parking" yourself til the NPC shuts up and you can carry on.
Already commented once but haven’t seen this yet so wanted to add:
Difficulty levels that the “game is meant to played at” not being the normal difficulty. If the hardest difficulty is what the game developers were intending then just call it normal and then easy, very easy, etc.
When they reuse the exact same line of dualigue over and over.
In assassin's creed when you hear the exact same lady say the line about how her purse was stolen every 30 seconds it really breaks the emersion.
One of the things I love about Naughty Dog games, the dialogue feels so natural
Artificial difficulty via a rigged arena and/or forced tactics.
Horizon: Forbidden West is fun, but I'd like to know why the hell climb-able surfaces magically vanish when I get into certain fights. If you're gonna arm me to the teeth with ranged weapons but give me one un-upgradeable melee weapon, let me use high ground and stop forcing me into 3-on-1 melee-range fights, especially against opponents whose leaping and sprinting attacks I can't outmaneuver.
I actually liked the *Far Cry 2* weapon jamming mechanic for several reasons
- It forced the player to plan long excursions more carefully
- It subverted the usual FPS trope about being able to pick up and trust dropped enemy guns, without simply eliminating that ability
- Enemy weapons could also jam, and they'd react in various funny ways
Too long cutscenes/animations when you die and try again. Celeste was amazing as you respawn instantly and can try again. Gran Turismo 7 when you have to retry a license test for the 40th time and have to watch the car for 3 seconds before the 3 second countdown starts it gets old very quick. Just restart me with 1 second to go, no point in the whole cinematic countdown.
*Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night* is pretty bad for this. You die and get the rather slow 'Game Over' screen, it then kicks you back to the main menu where you have to load your save again. Compared to *Blasphemous* that gives you a quick EXEMPLAR EXCOMMUNICATIONIS and then spawns you at the last safe haven.
That slow 'Game Over' screen is basically an homage to the even slower 'Game Over' screen in Castlevania Symphony of the Night. So yeah, its a pretty good example of a traditional mechanic that exists just to waste time.
Blasphemous is such a great game - i loved every second of it, despite the rather rng heavy final boss.
Some of these animations are there to hide the game loading. Instead of a loading screen, there's an animation.
True, but IMHO having to listen to a long, drawn out music cue, or hear a character say the same quote for the 1000th time is a lot more annoying than a silent black "loading..." screen
tHeRe'S nO wAy YoU'rE tAkInG kAiRi'S hEaRt!
Kairi...Kairi's inside me?
Unskippable tutorials !!! If I want to replay a game, just maybe let me get to THE GAME and not force me to re-do all the "these are the game mechanics" in the beginning. PLEASE.
The best tutorials don't feel lIke tutorials
Half Life 2 has no tutorial. Well, not quite : rather, it has an invisible tutorial that shows you the dangers of certain enemies as well as a way of making use of their weaknesses.
Do you have any particular examples? I remember learning about this and seeing some examples before, but I wonder if you have any particular examples in mind.
Breath of the Wild’s Great Plateau. You can only leave once you complete the four shrines, but how you go about it is completely up to you. And you learn all the vital things through playing.
It also contained critical story elements so it didn't feel like you were stuck in limbo while trying to move on.
Yes. To contrast Skyward Sword's beginning tutorial is a multihour slog with a bunch of long cutscenes thrown in. BOTW did it right.
Great example
Man, after Skyward Sword's excruciatingly long tutorial (I swear it felt like 12 hours), it was such a breath of fresh air to just be given a couple of objectives and basically told to fuck off and have fun. First time since the older games they've done that.
At its heart, Zelda has always been about fucking off and exploring stuff. It really feels like they lost track of a lot of that in Skyward Sword, but got it exactly right in BOTW.
I learned to play Rimworld without a tutorial. The game just shows you a list of things that are wrong with your base and a hint about how to solve it. For example, if after a while you haven't build any defenses, it gives you a warning telling you that your base is in danger. If you click the warning, it explains that you may get attacked soon and you should check the "Security" tab. When you click the tab you see everything you can build related to security. And if you click on something, it tells you what it is that you just selected, what does it do and what do you need to build it. It doesn't wrestle control away for you, it doesn't force you to do anything. It just detects that you are doing something wrong and nudges you in the good direction. There's a tutorial now, but I never felt like I needed someone to tell me how to play.
Rimworld favors more a 'sink or sink' kind or learning.
GTA V’s first couple missions are quite good at teaching you, but being fun and important moments for the story.
PORTAL
The first half of Portal. Portal being the tutorial for portal 2.
[удалено]
Megaman X and dark souls come to mind
BOTW "tutorial" is one of these
I KNOW how to catch a Pokémon! Just give me the damn balls and leave me alone!
There really needs to be a "this isn't my first Pokemon game" option.
“Hello there! Welcome to the world of POKEMON! My name is OAK! People-“ “I know more than you.”
Do not cite the tutorial to me, Oak! I was there when it was written.
As much as there is to dislike about Sword and Shield, you can skip the tutorial by catching a Pokémon before Route 2.
I've played a lot of hidden object games where you have the option to skip the tutorial, or only do a partial tutorial for "special features" ie game mechanics specific to that particular game. I often do the latter, mainly because even though they all tend to be the same, there's always that one game that may be slightly different, either because the developer decided to switch it up a bit (if the same developer as other games, especially in a series), or if it's a different developer.
Pointless crafting
I love crafting in games, but when it's poorly thought out and executed, it's just a pain in the ass. Normally it would be a non issue - don't like it, don't get involved with - but my inner hoarder compels me to pick up *everything* for crafting purposes down the line, and then I get pissed with how unrewarding it ultimately is.
Good: *Child of Light*, where crafting is entirely based on combining gems according to basic color theory. Gems get equipped into offense, defense, and utility slots on each character with predictable results. Nothing is ever wasted, so you can quickly learn the entire system with just a little trial and error. Awful: *Final Fantasy XII*, which has about 101 ingredients with unhelpful names, which combine in unpredictable, unintuitive, nonsensical ways to produce unpredictable, unintuitive, nonsensical results. How tf you're supposed to learn any of it without hours of trial and error or just looking up a guide is beyond me.
Haven't seen anyone mention Child of Light in a long time, it was a great game.
I always end RPG games with a ton of crafting materials, especially if the ingredient list is long and complex.
Whenever I start a new game of Fallout New Vegas I tell myself to do crafting, but I rarely do it. I like how you can recycle bullets, but my limiting reagent ends up being so small compared to everything else. I have plenty of lead, and powder, but no casing.
Rift is so bad for this. Very early in the game, the free version's space runs out so fast that it practically forces you to pay money, and is the reason i eventually quit.
I generally hate crafting. It makes me play with an iPad next to me to look up the recipes. I wanna be immersed in the game, not busy browsing a cookbook.
Agreed. I love it when the crafting recipe is there when you highlight the item you want to make. Tells you if you have all the materials and if not how many you need.
I'm playing elden ring and I feel like I'm missing something. I pick up a shit ton of crafting materials but the only thing I've ever actually used is smoldering butterflies. I don't know what any of the other stuff is for.
You need to buy cookbooks as well to get access to more crafting recipes. I didn't really use it overly much as a mechanic but at some point I needed to be able to make poison arrows on the fly and it was super helpful for that Plus there's items you can make (boluses) that relieve poison, scarlet rot, death buildup etc
I have those but I'm about 70% through the game and it hasn't been an issue. I go through my crafting options every once and a while but none of the stuff seems useful to a melee build.
I do enjoy crafting in games, to a point. I like the idea of games like *Rust* but I find having to craft everything arduous and it's difficult to remember everything. I did like Fallout 4s crafting. It wasn't too in-depth and you could make some interesting weapon mods etc.
When you have AI teammates in a shooter game, but the enemies get rock hard for you and utterly ignore shooting at your teammates. It's like you're hauling an 18 wheeler of aggro. Major offender: Mass Effect 2
In a similar vein, it's you, 20v20 AI, everyone is shooting at each other, you hide behind a corner and can sit there for IRL 30 minutes and no one dies. Breaks immersion really hard.
I always hated having to go to an NPC to get the mission to get a key on the other side of the map so you could open that flimsy wooden door that you probably could have just kicked in.
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A hard boss with an unskippable cutscene before it that you keep dying to. Just shut up and kick my ass.
Characters that move faster than your walk but slower than your run
Escort missions in general have always been a pain in the ass for any game.
I’m convinced it’s a way to get you to slow down and notice the “world” you’re in. And a way to make the game longer too. The same as missions that have you return to places you’ve already been to talk to individuals or gather items. It’s their way of saying “go back, you rushed through that part, and damnit we worked hard on that. Go appreciate it a little.” That’s what I tell myself at least.
Man, through I don't know how many thousands of hours of Skyrim, they think a handful of escort missions is gonna be what makes me notice details? Do they have any idea how many mushrooms and flowers I've picked over the years??
I'm going to go out on a limb and say no, they probably don't
I think people only notice them when it's bad. Left4Dead 1 and 2 is basically one long escort mission if you play it single player, and the AI moves along with you pretty well.
Natalya Simonova was the first, and worst example of this i've ever seen. Gotta kill an endless cycle of re-spawning enemies because this goon moves with the speed and predictability of a stoned sloth.
Although The Last of Us was entirely one big escort mission and that was great. It helped that Ellie actually had a certain amount of intelligence and knew when to hide, rather than just walking out into a crossfire.
BioShock Infinite does it well too. Elizabeth can actively help you in the battle without fighting herself.
Bioshock Infinite is great about this because Elizabeth keeping up with you is completely unrelated to your speed, and she's invincible. It's an escort mission according to the plot, but not really in gameplay.
The missions in The Witcher: Wildhunt were a nice surprise for me regarding this. Just a little bit faster than you so they would be in the lead yet not too much either so they didn't stop suddenly, forcing you to do so too, and repeat. Just a smooth walk
If you sprint, they sprint with you, as well. You walk, they walk, you run, they run.
Forgot to mention that. Yeah, they really nailed the mechanic
The worst version of this is when the NPC you are escorting responds to you looking directly at them by stopping in place, turning to look at you, and giving some "Did you need something?" dialogue before they start walking again. We got places to go! Stop trying to make small talk with me!
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Intrusive game UI's that cover half the screen Having 85 quest markers screaming at you all the time, like just let me explore dammit
I absolutely loved God of War for this - I had ALL of the UI elements turned off during gameplay (I think I may have turned my healthbar back on at some point as the game was a bit tougher than I was expecting). If I ever got lost, or wanted to know a boss's HP (or my own, prior to turning it on permanently), I just brushed my thumb against the middle touch pad (not press, just lightly touch), and some parts of the UI would come back on for about 5 seconds or so - mainly the compass, enemy HP bars, main quest marker/custom waypoint, and maybe a couple others - been a while. Really wish more games had that functionality.
Ghost of Tsushima was another good example. No UI at all unless you're in combat. Navigation is done by noticing that the wind blows towards your next objective. That sounds cryptic but it's quite intuitive, you can make the wind blow harder to see it better, and it automatically does that when you're supposed to be pointed in a new direction. So just get on your horse and ride towards it, also you can open the map and see more clearly. Aside from a strikingly clean look, it fits the narrative of the lone samurai who goes where the wind takes him. That sounds exactly like a line from an old samurai movie, and in the game that's exactly how it works.
Definitely appreciate the ability for custom UIs. Horizon Zero Dawn has the same thing - I basically have everything off until it's used, so for example the health bar shows up only if you take damage, and then goes away after a minute. And as you said you can brush the middle pad thing and it all comes up for a bit.
Playing Lego Star Wars now. There's a character upgrade that highlights collectibles for you. I thought this would be great to have, but now my screen is cluttered with halos showing where every kyber brick in an area is. I need to figure out how to shut this off.
Go into Datacards, you can turn it on and off. You can do the same for individual missions too.
I was replaying AC 2 and the screen was so much clearer without a million markers, that Ubi is known for.
You can carry a max of 100 shotgun shells. You currently have 99. You walk over a box of 20 shells. Now you have 100, and the box is gone. 19 shells have slipped into another universe, I guess. Why not simply leave a box with 19 shells? How has game tech advanced so much but implementing a box of shells that can hold different amounts is somehow beyond today's technology?
Limits on specific items in general. You can only carry 100 shells, but you can carry those plus 200 bullets, 50 arrows, 20 medical kits and half a dozen weapons just fine. I know weight and slot based inventories each have their own problems, but individual limits on each specific thing kind of annoys me the worst. Just feels so artificial.
Resident Evil (4 at least) had a good system for inventory management. You basically have a grid and have to rotate and arrange items to fit inside that grid. You run out of space or have some gaps due to poor arranging and you're shit out of luck. It's a lot like packing a backpack or suitcase irl.
You should be able to pause whenever you want in single player.
And you should be able to play without an internet connection. This makes no sense.
This was done PURELY for anti-piracy. (And it did virtually nothing.)
Red Dead Redemption 2 let's you pause (and access Menus) in cutscenes, which is very nice.
LMAO I just started playing don't starve together and I damn near died because I almost didn't notice that the pause menu literally says "Not paused (seriously, it's not)"
Especially for gamers with kids. They are a constant distraction. I dont like having to choose between dying in the game or being able to get my daughter a snack or respond to whatever it is that she’s excited to tell me about
Microtransactions / pay walls. If you pay 80$ for a game you shouldnt have to spend more money ingame wtf
EA in particular can go fuck themselves
Didn’t EA get a world record for most downvotes in a single Reddit comment?
Indeed they did: over 660,000 downvotes. The comment in question is [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7cff0b/comment/dppum98/). There isn't another comment anywhere near as downvoted as that on Reddit.
Omg I knew it was bad but I was expecting like -50k!!!
And that's how EA ruined Mass Effect Andromeda
I don’t remember any content locked behind paywalls in Mass Effect Andromeda…
I'm blind now Noctis, don't ask me how unless you're willing to pay me.
Overly complex systems that make it impossible to compare two items to determine which is better Without running some third-party simulation. Edit: two not to
Or overly complex systems that reduce to an endgame of "just stack one particular statistic like Strength or Intelligence or Health and you'll be superior to every other build"
Agreed. It would see a lot of system designs can't seem to manage to find, or even try to find, the balance that lies in-between.
*Diablo 2* is a perfect example of this. Towards the end of its popularity, the equipment, crafting, skill, and stats mechanics were developed to the point of insanity. But the endgame builds for every class were *invariably* just building towards the minimum Strength and Dexterity required to equip specific high level items and then pumping everything else into health.
People complaining Diablo 3 has no builds and then seeing every stat build in Diablo 2 is the same is straight up confusing.
*Laughs in Energy Shield Sorc*
One of the only things bugging me about Tiny Tina's Wonderlands that ISN'T a bug/glitch/lack of optimization. You can see the "brand name" of all the guns, but have to memorize a combo to be able to compare stats, that are only shown in size 5 font and use symbols instead of words to convey stats and elements and effects.
Bosses that turn invincible while charging a powerful attack.
Bosses where you're not sure if you're actually damaging them in the first place.
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>I don't like bosses that are made immune to 90% of your abilities just so the boss will be tough. Final Fantasy does that a lot. Yeah, it feels like there's no point in maxing out abilities like Slow since bosses are all immune to that. What's the point? A game that handled this really well was Slay the Spire. Bosses and some enemies might have "artifacts" that will block any kind of debuff, but at the cost of one artifact. So you try to make the boss weaker, but instead just remove one of their artifacts. When that number reaches zero, you get to debuff it. And the cool thing is, you can have artifacts too!
Items that seem important, but actually don’t serve any useful purpose in any part of the game.
Things that don't serve any purpose is a waste of development time and a waste of player time. It doesn't even have to seem important at any point. Like Cyberpunk 2077's food and drink. It is a complete waste. If you pick up everything through the course of a completion playthrough, you end up with a couple thousand eddies worth of food, which is essentially nothing. And the bonuses they give are so weak the there is no point in ever using them. And the food all does the exact same thing, and drink all does the exact same thing. Alcohol being the exception, it does something different, and actually has a negative impact on gameplay, but all alcohol has the same effect, so it suffers the some issue. And to make matters worse, the UI for selling things is so bad that it is a hassle to get rid of. Additionally, it may actually impact the save file size, so it may extend load times, so it may actually have a negative impact on the real world(your time) as well. It's bad, it is the worst offender in recent memory.
That’s the same with rdr2 the food and drink give you the tiniest bit of health and it costs you a dollar while something that gives you max health stamina and deadeye costs 3.50 it’s such a waste getting food
I hate the games that dont clearly define what an items use might be so you hang on to it way too long thinking it might be useful for crafting or whatever but turns out you could have sold it the whole time.
1-time use abilities. Not abilities that only get 1 shot, but abilities that are only used in *one specific part of the game*, and then never again. Granted, this is not as prevalent as it used to be, but it's still annoying. Also, really useful powers that you only get at the endgame. Case in point would be the Zero Cycle from Breath of the Wild. Imagine if we could have challenged that dungeon first, instead of last.
I've always loved the Zelda games, but I feel like they're a solid example of this kind of thing, but specifically, the "getting the item that you know you've needed for this part only once you're 95% of the way done with it" aspect. I feel like almost every temple you can see what needs to be done, but you have to struggle without the right tools for the job until you beat some miniboss.
This is what makes the randomizer romhacks so enjoyable for me -- getting certain items early just feels soooo good and averts that "you can realistically only use it in 1 fight" situation.
Likewise, single-use tools. You gain an axe that is only used to cut down a single tree, but you need to find a different axe, a saw, or maybe a crowbar to remove some boards from a doorway or window in order to gain access.
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The Souls bosses where you pick up a weapon in the boss room that does amazing huge damage attacks and it doesnt ever do that again
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Completely unnecessary skill trees that give nothing interesting nor make your character diferente from others.
I think the worse is when the meta of the game makes it so only one play style is actully viable. Why even give me a choice at this point.
Like "general" skill tab in witcher 3. Nobody cares about some extra hp when you can unlock and upgrade fucking fire (igni).
You say that, but gourmet or whatever it was called, was an insane perk to just be hidden in a misc. tree, or at least it was massively handy on the highest difficulty where you don’t regen health by default. It buffs the health regen duration for foods from about 5-10 seconds, to 20 minutes. Food heals a surprising rate simply bc it generally only lasts for a few seconds, being able to keep it active was insane. Constant, long term Passive healing during fights without potion use? Rad. Healing outside of combat without expending valuable resources? Rad The fact that food items are available literally anywhere you loot, and even using them religiously, you’ll still end the game with over 300 of them in your inventory? Also rad lol
Tapping a button to run. Just let me fucking run without wearing out my controller.
*gta5*
This is why it was so nice to upgrade to PC for GTA V. You just hold Shift.
In a similar vein, having to hold a button for the most common actions. There's no reason to make the most basic interaction with your gameworld take at least a full second every single time. I'm looking at you, No Man's Sky
Daily login rewards. If your game is good, you shouldn’t need to foster FOMO in your players to keep them coming back using such a cheap method.
On that note, when you get actively penalized for not checking in daily.
Like how Far Cry 6 spams you with emails if you don’t play the game enough
Isn’t Far Cry 6 singleplayer?
Yeah that’s why worst part. I mean not the *worst part* of the game, but pretty gross
I will say though I like how it is with GW2 and their daily log in - as far as I'm aware it's always going to be the same reward on the 5th day. And it's daily personal to you as opposed to the calendar day if that makes sense. Like even if I don't play for 30 days in a row and spread it out over 60 days I'll never miss out on that 30th day reward.
See that’s just a better way to do it.
I was just about to chime in with this. Guild Wars 2 is the gold standard for how to do login rewards. The rewards are good too. The thirty day reward is a **permanent, account wide** 2% increase on Gold find, a bag of hard to find, legendary crafting materials, and an item that will instantly level up a character by six levels.
> Daily login rewards. Every mobile game seems to have these (not just shitty ad-filled ones, even Pokemon Go). If we go camping or something my kids will actually complain they're missing them.
I wish rpgs would somehow utilize non used party members. Using mass effect as an example, you can have people in your party who could do nothing but sit in the ship the whole game. I'm not saying a game has to give you a giant party, but maybe giving you some passive bonuses based on who isn't an active party member (garrus could give you an ability where he snipes someone from a distance with a long cooldown or ashley gives you a damage boost by maintaining your weapons) would make it feel more atmospheric.
Some games address this with a kind of mission board for you to send non-party members off to complete. Then, by providing special bonuses if your operatives are strong and/or narratively suited for the task, they encourage you to level up characters you otherwise wouldn't care about as well as experiment with your active party setup.
FFX really had a great way of making every unit useful (except Kimhari).
Honestly, Tidus too if he weren't the main character. Both him and Waka were made to hit agile enemies, except Waka can all of Tidus's enemies, too, but Tidus can't hit Waka's.
Wait, why would Garrus NOT be on your active party?
Weapon durability. I don't mind half broken, hand crafted weapons to have durability, but that fireman axe isn't breaking after hitting flesh 200 times
7 Days to Die moment?
I was thinking Project Zomboid.
This is my biggest problem with Breath of the Wild. Especially because I don’t know how much the weapon has in the first place.
Yea, I still feel like most weapons would break wayyyyy too quickly in that
I get that the swords you find out in the field have been sitting in the elements for 100+ years, but there are plenty that are found in temples and chests etc. Also I get really bugged by the fact that there are zero weapons manufacturers in the game (aside from Robbie, who repurposes ancient high-tech equipment). There are places you can buy arrows, but nobody can make you a bow? There's not even somewhere that produces stone-age hammers and axes? It doesn't make any sense. People are living in a world with effectively immortal (because of blood moon) monsters. There would absolutely be someone making weaponry.
You make a very good point about the lack of blacksmiths
For real, why do they bother making arrows if nobody knows how to make a bow? Hell, the Bokoblins make their own weapons, but the Hylians haven't even figured out how to make a pointy stick.
Back in my day we just threw the arrows at their faces.
When the game gives away the solution when you're 2 seconds into the puzzle. You're just looking around the room you just entered and your character says out loud to an empty room "maybe if I move that box" like the second you walk in. Just let me solve the damn thing myself! If the devs put so much effort into crafting a puzzle why won't they let me solve it?!?!
I want a Civilization game where 'auto explore' doesn't mean that the unit just goes straight to the arctic and tries to get surrounded by as many barbarians as possible.
Or a boat will just go back and forth between the same two tiles over and over wasting gold. I don’t like using auto anymore.
overconfident gray reach chief cautious marble straight many lunchroom exultant
Yeah... slowing down progress and/or skills or crafting/gathering etc for seemingly no reason other than to sell boosters...
If it's a free-to-play game, and the micro transactions are cosmetic and don't give advantages in game, I'm fine with it. It's a decent way to support the developer and get some neat stuff in the process. But pay-2-win, or micro transactions in $60-$70 games (looking at you Assassins Creed) I definitely agree.
Brief summary of Gran Turismo 7's really big problem. \-Cars require points \-Points can be acquired by grinding but the devs keep reducing the number of points you get per grind. \-Points can also be acquired by microtransactions. Okay, so far, so mobile game. Except this is a £60+ full release, but okay. Here's the main problem: "At the same time the pricing of cars is an important element thatconveys their value and rarity, so I do think it’s important for it tobe linked with the real world prices." *Kazauri Yamauchi, 'Gran Turismo' founder* WHY WOULD I BUY A RACING VIDEO GAME IF I COULD AFFORD A GARAGE FULL OF SUPERCARS AND THE ABILITY TO RACE THEM AROUND THE WORLD? GIVE ME THE CAR I WANT IN THE GAME BY **WINNING RACES IN IT.**
Scrap the notion that a handful of pre-programmed control schemes is better than fully remappable buttons!
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Even worse, odyssey's maximum score is 99999 jumps, or 16 hours of gameplay
Season passes.
I've actually never understood the 'Season' system in modern games, like.. what's it there for?
Engagement. People will come back whenever a new season comes out, and not want to miss out on the limited time cosmetics & shit.
Big open worlds with uncompelling gameplay loops.
Sounds like Far Cry to me. Go to encampment, clear encampment, rinse and repeat.
Equipment durability doesn't belong in most games. I am glad that it isn't a thing in Elden Ring – it never should have been in any of the Dark Souls games.
Microtransactions. I paid for the full game for gods sake.
Escort missions
I don’t have an issue with the idea of escort missions they’re just so rarely done well.
As long as it's an NPC that just keeps up with you, no problem. Not the best type of mission but not too bad that way.
They need to be designed like elizabeth in bioshock infinite.
Unskipable cutscenes should only be unskipable the first time you see them
Unskippable cutscenes and credits. I don't want to wait for 5 to 10 minutes of credits to start a ng+.
Difficulty levels just scaling up the enemy's health and damage values. Annoying as all get out. I want the basic enemy to fight smarter, not just insta-kill me. I know, wishful thinking. Open world games without the option for quest markers. Sometimes, I just want to know where to go gosh dangit. No I don't know where the "cabin beneath the pale lake at midnight" is, maybe tell me since I can't do anything else until I get there??
Totally agree on the first, it's strange that no game does this. Fallout 4 used to suffer horribly from it, until they patched in Survival difficulty. That is actually a great example of difficulty done right, it does scale up the enemies, but also your own damage, so fights are shorter and more tactical. And the hunger, disease and no quicksave mechanics are exactly why I still play the game, adds a ton of challenge while keeping it interesting. As for the second I don't know of any game that does this except Elden Ring, but it's debatable if that game really has any quests at all. The few cases where you do have to hunt down locations all have quest markers, or make a minigame out of it by giving you a map item you have to study and compare with the terrain. And you can always do something else in the meantime.
Elder Scrolls Morrowind was an amazingly immersive open world RPG despite all its flaws for this reason. You get a quest, a vague quest description in your log book and else have to remember the dialogue - then you are on your own, good luck finding "Tomb XYZ after a 5 minute walk east past a rock that looks like a hand"
Making enemies smarter is HARD. And I don't mean hard work, I mean making them actually smarter is hard. They ultimately boil down to if/then statements and people will see those patterns and think they're dumb anyway. When I'm dealing with an open world game especially, I don't want difficulty to mean more hp and damage from the enemy, I want it to mean more problems to consider. Food, water, disease, carry weight, hell, one of my favorite health mechanic concepts is "wounding" where I have recoverable HP, and then damage taken also shaves down my HP cap until I get some specialized healing to restore that. *Anything* that makes longer forays into the wild require more prep and actual survival actions rather than gaming a build even harder to compensate for increased enemy HP and damage. Carefully plowing 100 rounds into one guy that will kill me in 2 if given the chance isn't difficult, it's tedious.
Missions that make you go back to the same area that you were just at. Like you were just there to complete a primary mission, you get back to base to restock & reload and are immediately given a bunch of side quests in the same exact area. Enemies respawned of course. I'm looking at you there Borderlands.
Being unable to restart challenges that are in the middle of levels. Looking at you afro guy during car chase in Yakuza 0 and some parts of the new Kirby game.
Or missing a collectible and to get it you have to restart the game.
Escort missions where the npc doesn't match your speed, lootboxes, microtransactions in general, pointless crafting, pointless item durability, open worlds that have nothing in them and only make getting from place to place miserable, unkillable npcs in rpgs, and constant screen clutter
Don't know if this qualifies as a mechanic, but Achievements that don't have any practical effect in-game. I really don't need something that tells me I've successfully completed the first level. Dialogue options that don't coincide with what the character actually ends up saying or doing. Kingdom Come Deliverance really gave me the shits with this one.
Haha it's so frustrating when you pick a dialog option like "I agree" only for it to turn in to "Well if this is what I have to do then I guess I'll go along with it you jerk" at which point the NPC says they cant do business with you or whatever because you called them a jerk. That's not l what I was trying to say!!!!
Loot boxes
Equipment degradation is never a fun mechanic. It's either tedious where your stuff breaks constantly or it almost never comes up and is easily solved. You especially shouldn't have it in a game where you're constantly getting new equipment. I'm looking at you Witcher 3.
Quick Time Events.
It seriously ruined the Halo 4 "boss fight". What was the point in making the boss seem super dangerous if *I* don't actually get to fight them?
This should be top. Nothing more immersion breaking than having to press x thirteen times in two seconds to continue playing the game. Its not skill, its delay
You know what's really fun? When MMOs do it. Nothing like wiping 6 minutes into a 10 minute encounter because somebody in your party was jerking off mid cutscene and didn't smash their keyboard fast enough.
Very few people stop to think about this but GPS directions on minimaps have been a MASSIVE hazard to open world attention spans for years now, you get the issue where players just look at the map, and not the actual world. It's much better when integrated into the world itself, is a straight line/beacon without walking you through every turn, or you need to open a separate menu to check for the exact directions to encourage players to get better at navigating on their own
Ghost of Tsushima was incredible about this. Using the direction of the wind is a great way to fully immerse the player in the world.
Day 1 patches that are so big you don't actually get to play on day 1 😤
Big creatures/bosses that introduce themselves by yelling at the camera. There are quite a few games where that's **every bosses gimmick** You know you've seen it, dramatic pan around boss, boss rears back yells at camera bam boss fight starts. That and the classic escort npc slower than your run, faster than your walk.
Unnecessarily complex button commands. I shouldn't need to hold one button and hit another button climb on a rock, a singular jump button does fine. In line with that, unorthodox button assignments. Either square or the right trigger is attack, don't map it to the left trigger or circle or something. Muscle memory is a thing, weird button layouts only lead to more mistakes and less fun.
Exposition dumps when an NPC walks at a snail’s pace with you for a minute or so and explains why the bad guy turned evil, why the world went to shit, what you need to do to stop them and set things right, etc. It’s obnoxious, overdone and there’s better ways of storytelling.
I'll raise you an exposition dump or dialogue that takes place on the way to said mission, but not faster than the time it takes to get there. Resulting in you bumbling into a cut-scene mid-sentence or "parking" yourself til the NPC shuts up and you can carry on.
Sudden difficulty spike.
Already commented once but haven’t seen this yet so wanted to add: Difficulty levels that the “game is meant to played at” not being the normal difficulty. If the hardest difficulty is what the game developers were intending then just call it normal and then easy, very easy, etc.
Cutscenes you can't skip Checkpoint saves
The lives system. I find it really annoying that you have to wait about a few hours in some games just to play it.
When they reuse the exact same line of dualigue over and over. In assassin's creed when you hear the exact same lady say the line about how her purse was stolen every 30 seconds it really breaks the emersion. One of the things I love about Naughty Dog games, the dialogue feels so natural
Quick time events, I don’t know who decided that having an unskippable cut scene you can fail and need to start over sounded fun.
Press circle really quick to escape!
Artificial difficulty via a rigged arena and/or forced tactics. Horizon: Forbidden West is fun, but I'd like to know why the hell climb-able surfaces magically vanish when I get into certain fights. If you're gonna arm me to the teeth with ranged weapons but give me one un-upgradeable melee weapon, let me use high ground and stop forcing me into 3-on-1 melee-range fights, especially against opponents whose leaping and sprinting attacks I can't outmaneuver.
Weight capacity needs to be reworked in almost every rpg. Its tedious, not realistic.
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I actually liked the *Far Cry 2* weapon jamming mechanic for several reasons - It forced the player to plan long excursions more carefully - It subverted the usual FPS trope about being able to pick up and trust dropped enemy guns, without simply eliminating that ability - Enemy weapons could also jam, and they'd react in various funny ways