Tiny, insignificant details in games that really bother you

[NerfedFalcon]

Based on a similar thread about minor details that made a game for you, this is about things that aren't part of the main experience, but just bother you every time they come up, whether it's a minor inconvenience or a deal-breaker.

For example, the fact that in Dicey Dungeons, the word "dice" is used as both the plural and singular form, even though the correct singular is "die". And this would be excusable, except that Terry Cavanagh is a native English-speaker. I'm not normally a grammar Nazi, but instances like this in professional products just get on my nerves, to the point where even though I'm really interested in how the game works, I haven't ever played it and I don't plan to until that's fixed.

 

[SckizoBoy]

For example, the fact that in Dicey Dungeons, the word "dice" is used as both the plural and singular form, even though the correct singular is "die". And this would be excusable, except that Terry Cavanagh is a native English-speaker. I'm not normally a grammar Nazi, but instances like this in professional products just get on my nerves, to the point where even though I'm really interested in how the game works, I haven't ever played it and I don't plan to until that's fixed.

Nothing comes to mind at the moment, but this I will point out: in British English, both singular and plural is 'dice' and Terry Cavanagh being a London-based Irishman, it makes perfect sense for him to use this 'standard' lexicography.

 

[JoJo]

It bugged me more than it should when I found out that the Machoke I had on Pokemon Go was only 1.2m tall. I always imagined Machoke as being a buff, man-sized pokemon, now instead it turns out he's more like a buff eight-year-old.

 

[Yoshi]

Why do i have to go all the way to tom nooks to buy a plane ticket?

Why can't i just buy one at the freaking airport?!?!!!

 

[Dalisclock]

Whydo i have to go all the to tom nooks to buy a plane ticket?

Why can't i just buy one at the freaking airport?!?!!!

Doesn't Tom Nook have a stranglehold over the economy in these games? From what I've read, you pretty much start each game as an indentured servant(which is basically a slightly nicer form of slavery) to him until you can eventually work off your debt, upon which he gladly piles on more debt.

 

[Breakdown]

I was pretty irritated by the geography in Dark Souls 2, especially the elevator at the summit of the Earthen Peak that inexplicably leads straight up to the Iron Keep. Why not have the elevator descend to a tunnel linking both areas instead?

 

[SckizoBoy]

OK, got one...

Was playing a bit of Assassin's Creed: Odyssey the other day (restarted because of the free Ezio robes legendary armour set, and it was a bit of brainless fun now that work's ground down) and I remembered why the Eagle Bearer wielding spears bugged me. When worn on his/her back, it's shorter than they are, but when in combat, it's a proper length (like 3m or so). Holding a spear and stowing it yoyo its length, it bothers me even though I know why it's like that.

 

[Drathnoxis]

When you can't put away your weapons when not in combat. It's just annoying to see the character sprinting through the wilderness holding a rifle up to their face.

Also when you can't pull out your flashlight on demand. Looking at you RE7 and Farcry 3. I'll decide when it's too dark for me to see, thanks.

 

[laggyteabag]

Watching my Girlfriend obsess over Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and all I can see are tiny little inconveniences

Whydo i have to go all the to tom nooks to buy a plane ticket?

Why can't i just buy one at the freaking airport?!?!!!

Not being able to craft things in bulk

Having to go in and out of your house's storage to use crafting materials

Not being able to tell when your tools are going to break - other than keeping count

Really, really small stack sizes - or things not stacking at all, when they really should

To build an upgraded tool, you need to have the flimsy version in your inventory. If you dont have one, you need to craft one first

------------

As for games that I have actually played myself, in Halo CE, the flashlight can run out of battery. It lasts for a very reasonable amount of time, and it recharges fairly quickly, but I cant quite see why it even runs out of battery in the first place.

On that same theme, I generally just dislike things that can run out of "battery", but still recharge fairly quickly. In a lot of mid-00's to early 10's games, sprint is a finite resource, so you just end up sprinting, then jogging for a few seconds, then back to sprinting again. I get why it might be limited in combat, but when you are just running around the game world, its just a little annoying.

Or Mass Effect 1, where if you sprint in Combat, you feel like you are running at a 1000mph - but when you are running around a non-combat area, your options are "gentle jog", or "slightly less gentle jog"

Also, why is Sprint in Mass Effect called "Storm"?

 

[meiam]

I was pretty irritated by the geography in Dark Souls 2, especially the elevator at the summit of the Earthen Peak that inexplicably leads straight up to the Iron Keep. Why not have the elevator descend to a tunnel linking both areas instead?

Apparently that's what it was supposed to be, the elevator was suppsed to go down, but somebody screwed up and it was never caught.

 

[Dalisclock]

Apparently that's what it was supposed to be, the elevator was suppsed to go down, but somebody screwed up and it was never caught.

I blame it on the game being essentially redone from the halfway point of production. It explains so much of the crazy geography and distances in the game. Other examples being:

-Heide's Tower of Flame being much closer to Majula then it looks from Majula, and how the passage is apparently underwater but the actual distance you travel to the tunnel(and the tunnel doesn't reflect that).
-Heides tower of flame taking you below sea level(you take an elevator down to a half flooded level and then another down below that, which should put you underwater.) only to arrive at a Lost whaf which is at sea level with no changes in elevation to justify it.
-The Lava field around the Iron Keep being in no way visible from Harvest Valley despite being above it.
-Whatever is going on in the opening cutscene where you jump in a whirlpool and end up in Dranglegic. Apparently Time Travel was part of the original plot(beyond the giant memories) so presumably the Bearer of the Curse actually time traveled to the past via the magic whirlpool to reach drangleic.

Apparently the Aqueduct was originally supposed to allow you to bypass the Shrine of Winter but you'd have to beat a very difficult boss to do so. So now the Aquaduct has no purpose other then scenery.

 

[SilentPony]

I'm not sure its a 'small detail' but when no one in a game ever asks "Who the hell talks like that?"
Like lets be honest game dialogue is terrible, and everyone is trying to be the next Joss Whedon and everyone lacks self awareness.
"We will go to the Dragon Fortress and by sticking together, through fire and flame, our friendship will see us through!!!"

....who the hell talks like that?

 

[Dalisclock]

I'm not sure its a 'small detail' but when no one in a game ever asks "Who the hell talks like that?"
Like lets be honest game dialogue is terrible, and everyone is trying to be the next Joss Whedon and everyone lacks self awareness.
"We will go to the Dragon Fortress and by sticking together, through fire and flame, our friendship will see us through!!!"

....who the hell talks like that?

People who think they're in a fantasy novel despite the fact that even in fantasy novels people don't normally talk like that.

Reminds me of a joke from the show Bojack Horseman. In the final season there's a reporter, Paige Sinclair, running around digging up some of the more skeevy stuff Bojack did in previous seasons and she talks like she's from a 1930's film in a Mid atlantic accent. At one point she's talking to her sister, who talks like a normal person, who flat out asks her "Why do you talk like that? We're from Fresno".

 

[Dalisclock]

When you can't put away your weapons when not in combat. It's just annoying to see the character sprinting through the wilderness holding a rifle up to their face.

Also when you can't pull out your flashlight on demand. Looking at you RE7 and Farcry 3. I'll decide when it's too dark for me to see, thanks.

I don't see it much anymore, but in older games where a character is shown holding a weapon most of the time but when they need to maniipulate an object or open the door the weapon will magically disappear before reappearing once they're done. The first two fallout games were terrible about this.

On a related note, games where the "Do something" animation is a painfully generic one of the hands reaching out to the object and wiggling the fingers/hands rather then actual animation of 'Opening a door, picking up an object, pushing a button, pulling a lever". Mostly seen in older games as games nowadays which want to cut animation costs avoid showing the hands at all through clever camera tricks.

 

[SilentPony]

People who think they're in a fantasy novel despite the fact that even in fantasy novels people don't normally talk like that.

Reminds me of a joke from the show Bojack Horseman. In the final season there's a reporter, Paige Sinclair, running around digging up some of the more skeevy stuff Bojack did in previous seasons and she talks like she's from a 1930's film in a Mid atlantic accent. At one point she's talking to her sister, who talks like a normal person, who flat out asks her "Why do you talk like that? We're from Fresno".

Yeah exactly. People during the medieval ages didn't go around saying "Well its the medieval ages, guess we have to say Ye and Ya alot"

GoT was the same coin, opposite side. They were using words like 'motherfuck' and '****' and those words didn't really exist 1000+ years ago. Plus they were drinking starbucks, so that totally throws it off.
I just want one fantasy story were A. the writers don't think its clever to knock off Joss, and B. the writers don't think its clever to knock off George Carlin.

 

[Dalisclock]

Yeah exactly. People during the medieval ages didn't go around saying "Well its the medieval ages, guess we have to say Ye and Ya alot"

GoT was the same coin, opposite side. They were using words like 'motherfuck' and '****' and those words didn't really exist 1000+ years ago. Plus they were drinking starbucks, so that totally throws it off.
I just want one fantasy story were A. the writers don't think its clever to knock off Joss, and B. the writers don't think its clever to knock off George Carlin.

I blame Shakespeare, to be honest. People hear how people talk in Shakespeare plays and decided that was an accurate record of how people actually talked back then because....I realize common conversations weren't really recorded until fairly recently so nobody really knows how people talked day to day but theater tends towards the dramatic while letters tend to be formal.

I've been reading the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson and I do appreciate how it feels like the character talk like normal people while not making the mistake of sounding too much like something people from our world would say.

I was watching the show Carnivale Row, which takes place in a world not ours but with obvious parallels. So there's a full season taking place in NOT-Victorian London which is fighting the NOT-Crimean War against NOT-Russia and then out of the blue one of the characters mentions the world "Pharaoh". Which is a reference to a very specific ancient earth culture and comes across as Jarring as hell.

 

[Baffle]

For example, the fact that in Dicey Dungeons, the word "dice" is used as both the plural and singular form, even though the correct singular is "die". And this would be excusable, except that Terry Cavanagh is a native English-speaker. I'm not normally a grammar Nazi, but instances like this in professional products just get on my nerves, to the point where even though I'm really interested in how the game works, I haven't ever played it and I don't plan to until that's fixed.

But this is one of those things where so many people get it 'wrong' that language changes to accommodate. Just look at the fact that we now have 'literal' meaning 'actually literal' and 'totally not literal', and both are accepted definitions, even though both can't be right (I very much prefer the former meaning).

See also: 'the group is comprised of...'.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

People who think they're in a fantasy novel despite the fact that even in fantasy novels people don't normally talk like that.

Reminds me of a joke from the show Bojack Horseman. In the final season there's a reporter, Paige Sinclair, running around digging up some of the more skeevy stuff Bojack did in previous seasons and she talks like she's from a 1930's film in a Mid atlantic accent. At one point she's talking to her sister, who talks like a normal person, who flat out asks her "Why do you talk like that? We're from Fresno".

Reminds me of a vid saw recently about ppl like that, very cringeworthy stuff though, far beyond acceptable sanity. (First I heard bout it, sorry if old news)

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

To add, 3rd person shooters with no shoulder swap but a very intimate camera, such as resi evil remakes and evil withins. Also xcom 2 has this habit of blinding the shit out of my retinas every time I go to the control room when it does that earth hologram whole-screen whiteout. I like to play in darkness, but not for that.
Shadow of the tomb raider has like a thousand tiny annoyances I can never remember but always grate in the moment. At least it has shoulder swap though.

 

[Catfood220]

Disappearing weapons. And for this I'm going to use the most recent Tomb Raider games as an example. Ok, Lara can be using her bow and while she is using that it will be on her person. But you dare to swap to another weapon, say the assault rifle and the bow will disappear into thin air as if it never existed. Where does it go? Up her arse? Because when you want it again, its readily available for use. I know its probably because they can't animate every single weapon on her, but it is quite jarring to see.