Broken Gameplay Elements you Don't feel Bad about Using?

[ObsidianJones]

As some of you know, one of my favorite Genres of Video games has to be Fighting Games. If not my favorite.

And it's really a slog to go through. I'll be honest. You have to go through every character to see how they feel, what speaks to you, and even if you like the design. From there, you have to go into intense training. It's not like a first person shoot when you just need quick reflexes. You need quick reads of the situation, an encyclopedic command of not only your moves but knowledge of what the move your opponent through out, the frames, and the best way to respond and/or mitigate the damage. And You have to do that for every game that catches your eye.

It's tough.

So when you find a main that is horrible, you have to decide between your enjoyment of that Character's gestalt, or if you want to win.

I did not run into that problem with one of my favorite fighting games for the last decade.

Because Tekken 7 made Leroy Smith. And I fucking love him.

He is the most hated character that Tekken ever produced. I mean, just look.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=I+hate+Leroy+smith+tekken+7

And.

I.

Love.

Him.

I can break it down in 3 different ways why I don't feel any sorrow about maining Leroy. Be forewarned, number 3 will disappoint you.

1.) It feels so good on a personal level to have a Broken Character that looks even tangentially like me.

This is such a petty reason that it doesn't deserve that much say. In fact, this is all the time I'm giving it. I've played Video games literally all of my life. It feels good to be represented in such a way once. That is all.

2.) The age/old arguments "Pick a Top Tier"/"Don't Complain, just get good".




And even when Woolie said that Sf3, the twins made it that you either switched to them or you didn't win... Yeah. He's right. Does it make the game less fun if you don't want to be those people but you're forced to? Yeah. But it also makes the game Less Fun when I want to make a team of Ryu, Jill, and Hayato because they look bad ass and I'm going to get trounced on the regular because I don't have Rocks or Hard Drive on my team (A little MVC2 reference for ya.

Finally, I get to know the power of picking a top tier and loving everything about the design of the character.

But that leads me to my last reason.

3.) I don't play online.

I admit this is the ultimate cop-out. I just don't have fun playing with people I don't know. That I can't grow with and develop rivalries with. Every weekend used to be my boys at someone's house and unlimited fast food, fast matches, and trash talking. Getting revenge, making statements, and daring each of us to get better for next week. I do not have that in online. Not even close. So I have no need for it. Who cares if I'm Leroy if I'm just grinding on my own?

Told you that you're going to be disappointed.

Ok, what are some of the Broken Gameplay Elements that you will use/exploit/or main without any shame?

 

[Casual Shinji]

Apollo's Ascension in God of War 1.

It's a move you get after your first blades upgrade that serves as a launcher and becomes a juggler with you suspended in mid air. So the fact that you're able to launch and then immediately juggle nearly every enemy, while keeping yourself in the air and out of danger from other enemies, is already OP as fuck. But then you factor in that it sends your combo counter into overdrive, and that you gain souls the higher your counter gets, meaning more EXP., meaning quicker upgrades, and yeah... I usually have fully upgraded blades by the time I leave Athenes.

And I love using it. Not so much that I lament its absence in the following games though.

 

[Dreiko]

Broken is a really heavy word so I try to avoid it as much as possible in the context of fighting games. Some people use it colloquially as a synonym for "top tier" but that's too messy for my taste. Broken is when you have skill cease being a factor, and this game element is so dominant where the entire metagame shifts into chars who can deal with this thing and those who can't. Thing is, players will often label things THEY can't deal with as broken, when in fact other people can deal with them. People often try to find a way to call things broken to excuse their suckage.

So in my pursuit to not use a crutch in such a way, I often end up on the opposite end, I almost never call things broken (outside of stuff in games like fate unlimited codes or melty blood or games which are clearly not competitively balanced, it's fine there), at the worst case scenario I'm being harder on myself when I do that, but I get better that way so there's no issue. I don't mind the ego kick of losing to something broken and feeling bad about it. I think that feeling like I coulda won if I did better even when I maybe couldn't win anyways is a good outlook to have and it helps you keep striving for improvement whereas feeling ok with losing because it was a broken thing that you couldn't do anything against anyways is toxic. Feeling ok with losing for any reason at all is toxic. Even if you play with the world champion you can always win, you can always perfect them. No excuses, just do better.

 

[Dreiko]

In my main game of blazblue I've used Bang from the start, he was low tier at first, then top, then bottom, then upper mid, then lower mid, then mid mid, suffice to say, I've been all across the tiers and never dropped the dude. I just care about the char being fun and cool, tiers are, if your game is balanced, something you can overcome with enough practice. Some other much more unbalanced games, especially capcom stuff, apparently have legit unusable tier chars who are just severely limited in what they can do but blazblue is not like that. It's a game where everyone is really good at something, and the top tiers are really good at everything. You still have SOMETHING that even bottom tiers are really good at though, so they can always win by using that.



Btw you can easily form rivalries online if you play enough, I must have over 50 psn friends from just fighting randoms online over the years. Also joining a discord helps get that feedback and fun trash talk and everything too. You gotta remember that tiers are only relevant at the highest level of play as well, they're about how good a char is when used at the highest skill levels. If people are lower skilled, chars who are just easier to use or have simple high damage stuff without a complex way of applying it will perform way better than harder to utilize but higher-tier chars. So if you just do locals with friends who presumably don't go to tourneys and what have you I just wouldn't worry about tiers at all and just play whomever I enjoy lol.

 

[Chupathingy]

I reveled in using the classic Marathon + Lightweight + Commando + Tac Knife build in Modern Warfare 2. Running around with akimbo 1887s was also a ton of fun, even after they were 'nerfed'.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Playing someone's (totally unofficial) mod of Doom2 that lets you play the original 6 Wolfenstein episodes, all of them somewhat rehashed, and with the options of playing the first two very rehashed...I think the idea was to do that for all of them, but the creator quit before doing them all.

Anyhoo, you can get stick grenades, which bounce around and are easy to blow yourself up with, but if they go off near a pillar they can destroy it. Several levels have pillars blocking places, blow them up and you can skip parts of the level without technically cheating. There's one level where the entrance is right next to the exit, but there's a locked door in the way you can bypass by destroying some barrels you can use ordinary bullets on.

 

[sXeth]

Limbo or Vauban in Warframe.


Both effectively approach actual god mode because enemies literally can not fight back.


Fortunately not terribly overused because most Warframe players are too busy counting their DPS or trying to one tap things (which works up until the exact point in the level scaling when you cant and that enemy one taps you back)

 

[Kyrian007]

Tecmo Super Bowl... and I'm NOT mentioning using Bo Jackson. That was broken, but frankly so was using the late Derrick Thomas. His rating was high enough that taking control of him was almost a guaranteed sack every play, and Lawrence Taylor had a similar rating.

And sticking with sports games, there has always been a "broken" play in EA Sports NHL games. In 92 an on target slap shot from a spot between the high slot and the blue line was very high percentage. In 94 it was the new one timer feature, a pass into the low slot and one timed almost always went in. In 96 and then again in 00 and 01 a double deke move ending at the crease (we called it "the wiggle") was a nearly 100% shot if you could do it right. Also in 01, a hip check between the circles had a 70% chance to injure an opponent. And so on and so on... every iteration has its broken moves, you just have to find it.

And I don't play online, so I have no problem exploiting broken gameplay elements.

 

[CaitSeith]

Ranged magic in Dark Souls.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

That is a pretty cool character though. White dreads are always a personal fave, unless they're on a white people, looks too ghostly then.

With other games, if it's difficult or annoying enough, I'll happily use non-glitch exploits to make life a tad easier. Any Soulsborne or fighting game is fair...game. Not for puzzle elements or genres however, that goes against an ethical code I didn't realise I had until right now. Nor if the game is already to easy, like modern ubisoft games and the like. Spiderman gadgets I actively avoid because the challenge of ninja kicking the shit out of everyone is infinitely more satisfying.

 

[BrawlMan]

Killer Is Dead - Just Guarding; especially when upgrading to the counter punch. You can keep enemies juggled for a long while. the Charge Cannn too. Once it was fully upgraded, there was almost no reason to go back to the other guns.

No More Heroes 1 - The final beam Katana with the Infinite battery and Dark Stepping. The former you needed to get the true ending anyway and the latter was really exploitable.

Bayonetta 1 & 2 - The kilgore glitch in the first game. The moon of Kahla & Witch Brace accessories in both games. Bayo can parry with the former, in the latter always gave her two blips of magic that would constantly regenerate. these I find really necessary on the higher difficulties.

Devil May Cry 5 - Royal Guard & Quadruple S. Yes, it requires never getting hit, but once you realize that the timing is a lot easier compared to 3 & 4, but being nerfed ain't that big a deal.

​

Donkey Kong Topical Freeze - Dixie Kong. She's just better at everything. Gives you more height and could float in the air a lot longer than anyone else, and her power up gives you more hit points. With a total of 8, or 9 when playing on Funky mode in the Switch version.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Donkey Kong Topical Freeze - Dixie Kong. She's just better at everything. Gives you more height couldn't float me air a lot longer than anyone else, and her power up gives you more hit points. With a total of eight, or 9 when playing on Funky mode in the switch version.

I always go for Dixie.

 

[Trunkage]

Another +1 for Dixie

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Apollo's Ascension in God of War 1.

It's a move you get after your first blades upgrade that serves as a launcher and becomes a juggler with you suspended in mid air. So the fact that you're able to launch and then immediately juggle nearly every enemy, while keeping yourself in the air and out of danger from other enemies, is already OP as fuck. But then you factor in that it sends your combo counter into overdrive, and that you gain souls the higher your counter gets, meaning more EXP., meaning quicker upgrades, and yeah... I usually have fully upgraded blades by the time I leave Athenes.

And I love using it. Not so much that I lament its absence in the following games though.

Oh, hell yeah, that made the game fun.

Donkey Kong Topical Freeze - Dixie Kong. She's just better at everything. Gives you more height and could float in the air a lot longer than anyone else, and her power up gives you more hit points. With a total of 8, or 9 when playing on Funky mode in the Switch version.

Diddy is OP in DKC as well.

 

[BrawlMan]

Diddy is OP in DKC as well.

But not as much as Dixie. Ironically, Diddy becomes the worse character to use, because his special abilities are too basic in comparison to Dixie or Cranky. Dixie has a much higher jump and air time, and Cranky is basically Scrooge McDuck and jump on spiked hazards or enemies with his cane. Dixie's special move allows more health, and Cranky gives you more Banana coins. Diddy...you get more lives. Which becomes useless at the halfway point, because you'll most likely have plenty of those already by that point.

 

[Dalisclock]

Summoning for bosses in Souls can break their difficulty clean in half. Bosses do get a boost in health and resistance(I think) but most of the time it does not remotely offset the fact the bosses suck at prioritizing targets and a decently skilled duo of players can easily get the boss in a pattern where one of you keeps the bosses attention while the other is running up behind to perform attacks or backstabs, and then switch roles once they switch aggro. It's like a deadly game of keep away. My victory over the Namless King in DS3 was me doing Melee while a magic user lobbed big ass black(and SLOOOWWWWW) fireballs at him. Nameless spent most of the time trying to spear me.....and not paying attention to the giant fireballs knocking off big chunks of his health bar.

That's not even going into the times I've seen 3 players gangbanging a boss to death by surrounding and wailing on it until dead. I might feel bad except for the times that guy had already pounded me flatter than a pancake before this.

When fighting 2 or more bosses in an encounter(O+S are the big example) having a co-op friend(Or a decent NPC phantom) is almost mandatory unless you're really good at crowd control for 2 or more assholes who are bigger and stronger then you(and often just as fast).

It's one of the reasons Sekiro bosses were often so hard because there was no co-op or summoned phantoms and thus no way to really break aggro on bosses. OTOH, this wasn't as big an issue as I could have been since the combat system is built around parries and keeping the pressure on, which is not how souls fights work.

I also don't feel bad when I realized the Ringed Knight near the end of the RInged City in DS3 can be cheesed by luring him to a nearby elevator shaft and waiting him for to try to attack. He falls down the hole and dies every single time. Easy 9000 souls and the only enemy standing between the bonfire and Spears of the church fight. If you've played that part, you know the big fucker I'm talking about.

And to make HappyNinja happy by not talking about Souls, RDR2 combat can be made quite a bit easier at close range by finding the Semi-auto shotgun as early as chapter 2(not far from Valentine either). High damage, high rate of fire and large magazine. Range isn't shabby either.

 

[Worgen]

I don't know, I tend to actively avoid tactics and characters that are supposedly broken or OP. Even if I main someone, if I start hearing they are broken I tend to move to someone else... I'm not really sure why, I think because I worry playing with something OP will make me bored or something.

 

[EvilRoy]

Breaking games is just kind of life when it comes to rougelikes and its part of why I love them. You start out with this weird grind as you try to just learn what the game is up to. What the enemies can do, what the environments are like, what the expectations are as you progress - traditionally those games do almost nothing to teach you what's coming next so you're always on your toes for the first while. And then you basically learn the game, and then you get that combo. The perfect storm of abilities, weapons and unlocks that fall right into your playstyle and absolutely wreck the game. The fantastic feeling of relief as you joyfully stomp all over the dbag enemies that have tortured you up to that point.

In terms of actual bullshit... If you've ever played Overwatch, particularly when Rein is popular, you've probably come across his buggy stupid ultimate. It takes a huge amount of strategy and patience to use properly at the best of times, and then a parakeet poop sitting on an otherwise perfectly level plane causes it to go haywire and just miss a bunch of people. Unless you use it on stairs. Something about how the ult effectiveness area is calculated goes super weird on stairs, and seems to effect things both above and below where the hammer strikes. So, all the sudden a low strength high difficulty ult can be used to blindside groups of enemies who did not expect to be hit (and probably should not have been) are ass up on stairs, perfect shooting level for your team. Not enough to make him OP, but it does a lot to make up for all the times Mercy sneezed and my ult bounced off the air wake, did nothing, and got me killed.

 

[Catfood220]

Fighting the bosses in Deus Ex: Human Revolution was such a pain in the arse and the Typhoon was so overpowered, it was the best way to deal with the bosses and get on with the rest of this game.

 

[Chimpzy]

Fighting the bosses in Deus Ex: Human Revolution was such a pain in the arse and the Typhoon was so overpowered, it was the best way to deal with the bosses and get on with the rest of this game.

Iirc, there was an even easier way for the Nammir boss fight. Takedowns did't work on him, except when the game first released, there was one specific situation where a takedown would work. When he vaulted over a wall, right at the top of his arc. Since vaulting is usually one of the first things he did, with a little luck you could end the fight in seconds with a single press of a button.

You can also cheese the final boss. Instead of bothering taking out the pod women and dealing with the adds, just make sure you have a laser rifle, then walk up to Zhao and laser her through the bulletproof glass. Tho I guess this isn't so much broken as an intended alternate solution, because letting light pass through is kind of the point of glass.