Broken mechanics! (Good and bad)

[Daniel_Rosamilia]

No, before you ask, this thread's not about that guy who did a shoddy job of fixing your car.
I was killing time on Reddit (as you do) and saw a decent summary of Morrowind's magic system, specifically the *massive* area-of-effect for spells:
I swear the default allowed for simply massive AoE's that could easily cover half a town. "30 pts Absorb Health for 3 second in Balmora"
Thinking back to my Morrowind time, the AoE system was broken as all hell, and that's what made it kinda fun, Having enough money to make a spell that wiped out an entire town, then reloading to do it all again, was part of Morrowind's unintended charm.
Then again, Skyrim had the same sort of thing with Smithing-levelling, but you could (and I almost did) level yourself to the point where you have no fighting power at all, but you're king of the blacksmiths.
So, dear Escapists, what are your favourite/least favourite broken mechanics?
And here's the relevant Reddit-thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/xs1d6/taunt_the_daedra/

 

[Aerosteam]

Do glitches count as mechanics? The Stretch Glitch in Halo 3 always makes me laugh...

Spoiler: Failo

 

[yuval152]

The worst game mechanic(bad) is the save system in dragon's dogma, who makes an open world RPG and allows only 1 checkpoint and 1 save?

And my favourite broken mechanic is the liberty launcher in TF2.

captcha: heebie jeebies

 

[ResonanceSD]

This is roughly the point where Arena Net decided to break guild wars 1. Permanent invincibility in PvE mode. Made the game mostly pointless for most classes -_-. Your option became a) create an assassin with this skill build and solo the entire game yourself or b) build a nuker, let an assassin with this skill build tank all damage on a map at once and kill everything or c) be "the healing guy" for the nuker.

 

[Tranquility]

Tough question.

Some mechanics being broke were good for more subtle reason...for example, Diablo 2's armor system. Armor rating was more or less irrelevant, as chance to hit was about 80% based on level. This allowed a lot of lower level items with good mods to actually be valuable, whereas if armor was relevant (ala Diablo 3), the only thing that would matter is the level of the item. Frosties, Chances, Bloodfist, etc, all useful because armor rating was not.

Then there's other mechanics that are broken for the worse. They don't really seem to change the depth of the game, they just make it stupidly easy. For example, in Oblivion, 100% chameleon was just dumb, nothing EVER attacked you. Just made the game feel frivolous. Oblivion also had the Drain Health thing, that would lower an enemies health by X for Y seconds, and would lower it past zero...making spells like "Drain health by 500 for 1 second" basically an instant kill for what would have been a weak skill. I don't particularly like these broken mechanics, as they don't really feel like they add anything to the game besides adding an IWIN button, which quickly drains my enjoyment.

 

[Tranquility]

This is roughly the point where Arena Net decided to break guild wars 1. Permanent invincibility in PvE mode. Made the game mostly pointless for most classes -_-

Oh no you didn't!

What was sad is that they left it in the game for years, and were hesitant to change it because they didn't want to make people mad. Ironically enough, I also quit the game because of it.

 

[ResonanceSD]

This is roughly the point where Arena Net decided to break guild wars 1. Permanent invincibility in PvE mode. Made the game mostly pointless for most classes -_-

Oh no you didn't!

What was sad is that they left it in the game for years, and were hesitant to change it because they didn't want to make people mad. Ironically enough, I also quit the game because of it.

I stuck around as the nuker.



I've just realised that the DP skill icon is a woman throwing some knives. Never knew that.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Smithing in Skyrim essentially made going through any dungeons that weren't giving you Shouts not worth your time. The stuff you make is so much better than anything you will ever find.

I have to talk about the League's one and only Darius for his little piece of broken technology that is his ultimate... It's meant to be a reward for sticking with a fight for long enough that you get max blot stacks on your target and therefore max true damage on your ult basically instakilling whoever is unfortunate enough to be in range.

The thing is that because a raw ult on its own can oneshot any squishies on roundabout a quarter health with its still decent chunk of true damage and when it kills a target it's cooldown immediately refreshes so lol go spam that R key good sir!

He's supposed to be a tank... That can literally instakill an entire team no problem with zero AD items and a full tank build.

This is how you fix it. It does no true damage when there are no blot stacks on the target. There. Negated his bullshit tower "dives" in one fell swoop. Now he has to actually commit to a risky prolonged fight under a tower rather than just pressing R then walking away.

OP Darius is still OP

So when are the EU West servers going to be graced by Diana's possibly OP presence? Do want, do want, do want, want nao! She looks so fucking cool! DEM TELEPORTS YO! ARE THEY BROKEN TIER!?

Speaking of Broken Tier...


So he has one character left. 3v1. This game is completely in the b-oh fuck no!

 

[Alternative]

Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer. all of it. it was all a broken unbalanced mess, yet i had so much fun with it.

 

[Itsthatguy]

Reflect effects in oblivion were hilarious when you got them high.
Nothing beats getting getting wailed on by 3 dread zombies until they beat themselves to death.

Several Skyrim mechanics were also silly. Smithing and enchanting could make you a nigh unkillable demigod. Virtually everything in the game could be stun-locked with dual cast destruction spells. Archery could be broken by something as simple as standing on a rock or taking 3 steps back after each shot while in stealth. Stealth in general was completely broken (instakilling a dragon by nicking its tail with a dagger, anyone?).

The hitscan system that mass effect 2 and 3 uses for player fired guns is also funny - Its possible (and extremely easy) to kill a YMIR mech by shooting at it through a wall (how to do it below).

Spoiler

Although bullets appear to come out of your gun, the game's hit detection system treats bullets as being fired from your camera. Hence, if you can see it, you can shoot it. Press yourself up against an object (without using it as cover). Move to the right side of it so that your camera is looking past it without your body being exposed. Now aim at something and fire. Congrats, you did it. Enjoy your slightly game-breaking exploit (IIRC it also works with powers).

 

[Cowabungaa]

I don't know if it really counts as broken, but in Red Alert 2 there was nothing that couldn't be won with a decent number of Clone Vats. Many lulz were had with those things.

What tops it all is C4 in BF3 though. That shit is just OP.

And my favourite broken mechanic is the liberty launcher in TF2.

What's up with it?

 

[theblindedhunter]

I'm also going to mention Skyrim because ever since the Steam Summer Sale I've pumped >200 hours into it... and wow that is weird to actually think about.
The levelling based on non-combat skills is kind of broken on two levels. Spend too much time levelling your non-combat skills, especially ones like Speech that give you no real benefit in combat, and you've made the game a lot less playable. Yet at the same time, they couldn't not factor things like Smithing in, really, that are only useful to a point without combat skills to back them up because they still do benefit you a great deal.
And then there is the part where it frustrates my do-everything style of play: you've got to be conservative with where you put your perks, levelling more than 1/2 combat skills puts the opponents stronger than any of the 3+, and you can't change your mind about anything. In a game with such a wide world to explore and so many features to see, I really would have expected something different.

And then there are the broken skills, like Destruction dual-casting which, combined with some very high magicka regen enchants and a wealth of potions, reduced every challenge to carefully timed stun-locking, and even made the Destruction skill itself almost totally pointless to invest in past being able to efficiently use the second-weakest spells - the first ones that would do the stun-lock.

The levelling is a pretty big bother to me. I wonder if I could tweak it in the Workshop...

 

[Andsre]

Late in Jak 3 you'd get wings that made your jumps much higher and allowed you to float over distances. But if you hit circle to kick while flying, you'd "reset" the jump, making it possible to fly even higher. LOVED that!

I should play that game again...

 

[Gurgleflob]

(not a great video but you get the idea)

Are you sure? the title says it is.

 

[yuval152]

snip

The downside and the goodside aren't balanced.

It's better to have a 40% faster rocket and lose 1 ammo slot. these things are unbalanced.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

Typically I guess I'm a fan. In fighting games unintended for mechanics often end up becoming high level necessities. In single player it's generally up to you; you can avoid trick jumping a wall and thus skipping half the level if you want to.

The only bad ones are the ones that work against you (funny how that works).

-edit-
Relevant comic
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/critical-miss/9245-Skyrim-Tales

 

[sextus the crazy]

Counter Strike: Source. The weapons are so unbalanced, but it's still a hell of a fun game.

CoD 4: the perks aren't balanced (Seriously, no one uses anything but stopping power and steady aim). Granted it's not nearly as bad as the constant Helo rape in the newer ones.

Pokemon RBGY: the newer ones get better at balancing, but the original games were a broken, exploitable mess.

 

[crazyrabbits]

Save scumming, in general. In any game with a gambling system, you can cheat and rack up millions.

Bunny-hopping/crouch-prone shooting in most FPS's.

LAM jumping/climbing up walls in the original Deus Ex.

Overpowered weapons/spells that are thrown in at the beginning of the game as a joke (Algernon's Cape in Baldur's Gate, anyone?).

DLC that breaks the game wide open and lets you beat the difficulty curve by giving you way more power/armor (the Advanced Unitology Suit in the original Dead Space, for example).