Game mechanics that need to die

[Eacaraxe]

Difficulty is designed to work on a curve, where earlier enemies are easier to fight against than later ones, that's why it can be completely good and correct design to have enemies that don't require the player to have fully mastered the mechanics yet. Increased difficulty is meant to ramp up that curve even with earlier encounters.

You're confusing game difficulty settings and game progression indicators. I'm not talking about the latter.

In the case of the latter, then sure, difficulty should scale the further in a game's progression the player is (it often -- hell, usually -- doesn't, but that's a different conversation). But that's not my critique -- my critique is that a game's difficulty settings -- in other words, the governing variable, usually selected at the start of game play, that influences all challenges throughout a game regardless of progression within a single playthrough.

Going back to Halo 2, enemies behave differently across all encounters in the game, based upon difficulty setting. The distribution and rank of enemies differ, but for example, on Normal difficulty Covie won't pin you down with suppressing fire and may only occasionally try to flush you out of cover with grenades. On Heroic or Legendary, you have to stay on the move, be careful about how you move between pieces of cover, and think a couple steps ahead because Covenant will try to outmaneuver you while pinning you down, and flush you out regularly. Whether that's your very first firefight on Cairo Station, or the very last firefight in Delta Halo's Control Room.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Videogame NFTs need to be killed in the womb

 

[Mister Mumbler]

Ok, can 2D platformers that also include combat stop making me have to do a down-strike to platform (looking at you specifically, Hollow/Shovel Knight)? It always ends up the same and have to stop all forward momentum to try and hit down, and either failing to do the strike correctly (and falling), or I end up inching along (and then falling). Who knows, maybe I'm just real bad at platformers, but it just feels weird to do.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Ok, can 2D platformers that also include combat stop making me have to do a down-strike to platform (looking at you specifically, Hollow/Shovel Knight)? It always ends up the same and have to stop all forward momentum to try and hit down, and either failing to do the strike correctly (and falling), or I end up inching along (and then falling). Who knows, maybe I'm just real bad at platformers, but it just feels weird to do.

I think Shovel Knight should be forgiven for this since it's kind of the central mechanic of the game, but I can certainly understand why you'd be frustrated with it in Hollow Knight.

 

[BrawlMan]

Ok, can 2D platformers that also include combat stop making me have to do a down-strike to platform (looking at you specifically, Hollow/Shovel Knight)? It always ends up the same and have to stop all forward momentum to try and hit down, and either failing to do the strike correctly (and falling), or I end up inching along (and then falling). Who knows, maybe I'm just real bad at platformers, but it just feels weird to do.

Everybody wants to be Scrooge McDuck. That's the main problem with that mechanic.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Skill trees. Do people actually find it fun when they level up for the first time and realize they need to spend half an hour planning out their leveling progression for the entire game? I can't think of anything more tedious than reading through description of skills 15 levels away trying to decide whether the fork I take at level 5 will lock me out of the best skill in the game.

Bonus points for when the further parts of the tree is hidden from you until you've already spend hours grinding to unlock them or look up a guide online.

 

[Dalisclock]

Everybody wants to be Scrooge McDuck. That's the main problem with that mechanic.

I understood that reference.

 

[BrawlMan]

Skill trees. Do people actually find it fun when they level up for the first time and realize they need to spend half an hour planning out their leveling progression for the entire game?

Depends on what is, but usually no for me. The only skill tree I remember enjoying are God of War 4 and Crysis 3. The former still had its own issues, and the latter is more like a skill slot, but functions nearly the same. Honestly, either get rid of upgrade systems that are not needed, if they're there just to pad the game. Or do the practical way of doings standard upgrade points or currency.

NFTS can all die and people that created the system and support them blindly.

 

[Dalisclock]

Skill trees. Do people actually find it fun when they level up for the first time and realize they need to spend half an hour planning out their leveling progression for the entire game? I can't think of anything more tedious than reading through description of skills 15 levels away trying to decide whether the fork I take at level 5 will lock me out of the best skill in the game.

Bonus points for when the further parts of the tree is hidden from you until you've already spend hours grinding to unlock them or look up a guide online.

I'm gonna admit, I see skill trees and I'm pretty much looking at a guide pretty soon after because if this a 30+ hour game where I it's gonna take forever to fill out the skill tree, I'm gonna set myself up for success there because I play these things for story, characters, worldbuilding and occasionally combat if it's good so I just want the character setup to work dammnit.

I also tend to do the same thing in RPGs where classes and their skills are really important because nothing sucks worse then fucking up a build out of ignorance and there's no way to change it mid-game and it takes 20-30 hours to finish. It took a me a good hour or two to figure out my party and class composition of Divinity Original Sin 2 before starting.

I know it's a saying that "Given the chance, People will optimize the fun out a game" but the inverse of that is "Haha, you picked the wrong skills and classes and now everything is a fucking fight to the death because you can't fix your mistake. Fuck you".

Maybe that's the real reason I never got into P&P Roleplaying, because all the character setup and mechanical RPG stuff is not what I'm interested in. Or maybe it's something else, because I've tried a couple different D&D-type tabletop streams and none of them have kept my interest for very long.

 

[Eacaraxe]

Skill trees. Do people actually find it fun when they level up for the first time and realize they need to spend half an hour planning out their leveling progression for the entire game? I can't think of anything more tedious than reading through description of skills 15 levels away trying to decide whether the fork I take at level 5 will lock me out of the best skill in the game.

Bonus points for when the further parts of the tree is hidden from you until you've already spend hours grinding to unlock them or look up a guide online.

In multiplayer online games, persistent or not, just...hard pass for me. Most of the dynamism and breadth of play skill trees could offer, get completely swept under the rug by either shit game design, shit game balance, holy trinities or hybrid taxation (which could be filed under shit game design/balance but deserve recognition in their own right), or cookie cutter/FotM mentality. As someone who played reck bomber and shockadin in early WoW, I can attest personally to how inventive and unorthodox, but "unintended", builds that actually achieve the purpose of having skill trees in the first place, get aggressively stomped out by designers at the first whiff of complaint by a community, larger context or how those builds fit within a game and its meta be damned.

In single-player or closed multiplayer games, there's a lot more freedom to use skill trees to determine PC growth and how the PC interacts with the game world. But even then, games with skill trees get easily kneecapped by poor game design, balance, QA, or all of the above. Especially in games where trees merely provide the illusion of character development and uniqueness as players are expected to fill them by endgame, when skill trees are mostly filler providing passive or static iterative bonuses, or when the handful of skills in the tree that do impact gameplay are foundationally broken or so poorly balanced they offer, at best, a Hobson's choice at how to proceed.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Skill trees. Do people actually find it fun when they level up for the first time and realize they need to spend half an hour planning out their leveling progression for the entire game? I can't think of anything more tedious than reading through description of skills 15 levels away trying to decide whether the fork I take at level 5 will lock me out of the best skill in the game.

Bonus points for when the further parts of the tree is hidden from you until you've already spend hours grinding to unlock them or look up a guide online.

The problem is like all games now have skill trees and like just about every other mechanic, devs are shit at implementing most mechanics and most skill trees now are shit. FarCry is a great example of a shit skill tree, there's only a few worthwhile skills to get and the rest of them are garbage like slightly faster reloading or slightly better hipfire. Then, games are filled with skills that you should have at the start of the game like, again, in FarCry 3 you have to unlock sliding and the ability to reload while sprinting or the Mirror's Edge sequel that made you unlock several skills the 1st game gave you from the start. Most skill trees are just pick what skills you want at the time because you're going to get all of them eventually and you really don't have any "builds" to do. OG Deus Ex was great because you had to actually choose and in the new games you just pick whatever you want at the time and everyone's character ends up being the same at the end anyway.

Skill trees can be very well implemented just like everything else. I think one of the best examples of a simple and streamlined skill tree is the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer where you got like 5 decisions to make as you leveled up a character and it was really straightforward as to which skills to pick for whatever playstyle you were going for and come up with a build in a few minutes after looking over the decision points. I remember you could make the Geth Infiltrator the most powerful melee character in the game or do a sniper build and it was really simple, no faqs required. Borderlands has much more complex skill trees but it's usually pretty easy to tell what skills work together and the skill trees are what makes Borderlands tick IMO because, without the skill trees, it's just a generic looter shooter.

I'm gonna admit, I see skill trees and I'm pretty much looking at a guide pretty soon after because if this a 30+ hour game where I it's gonna take forever to fill out the skill tree, I'm gonna set myself up for success there because I play these things for story, characters, worldbuilding and occasionally combat if it's good so I just want the character setup to work dammnit.

I also tend to do the same thing in RPGs where classes and their skills are really important because nothing sucks worse then fucking up a build out of ignorance and there's no way to change it mid-game and it takes 20-30 hours to finish. It took a me a good hour or two to figure out my party and class composition of Divinity Original Sin 2 before starting.

I know it's a saying that "Given the chance, People will optimize the fun out a game" but the inverse of that is "Haha, you picked the wrong skills and classes and now everything is a fucking fight to the death because you can't fix your mistake. Fuck you".

Maybe that's the real reason I never got into P&P Roleplaying, because all the character setup and mechanical RPG stuff is not what I'm interested in. Or maybe it's something else, because I've tried a couple different D&D-type tabletop streams and none of them have kept my interest for very long.

The actual skills in Divinity 2 were really straightforward outside of possibly some magic, magic users are always the most complicated. Divinity's stat system was pretty basic, get Dex for a rogue, Str for a fighter, etc. There was a couple places to put numbers you might wanna look up or what feats work well together, but you totally didn't need to make super optimized builds. Also, you can respec at like any point in Divinity 2 so no reason to have to plan out builds at like level 1. The biggest issue with Divinity 2 was how the armor system worked, IIRC you need to go all physical or all magic damage in your party, but I played with a mod that changed how armor worked because I knew going in that it was pretty stupid. Anyway, compare Divinity to something like Wasteland 3 where you really do need to read a faq to see how damage is calculated because the stat descriptions are so fucking vague. I haven't played Wasteland 3 in like 6+ months and I don't feel like going back squarely because I'll have to re-figure out what all the stats do in that game.

I can attest personally to how inventive and unorthodox, but "unintended", builds that actually achieve the purpose of having skill trees in the first place, get aggressively stomped out by designers at the first whiff of complaint by a community, larger context or how those builds fit within a game and its meta be damned.

That's why devs should never listen to the community about balance issues. The players will break the game if you give them what they think they want.

 

[twistedmic]

Suddenly and unexpectedly forcing players to use a different character with different skillsets, strengths and weaknesses, which can end up requiring an entirely new play style, needs to stop. I don’t know just how prevalent that is, but I have run into it on occasion.

The worst/most recent I can remember being in The Last of Us. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the shooting mechanics so I opted for a more melee-driven style, made possible by Joel’s size and strength. I made it through most of the game playing that way, until I was forced to play as the girl (Elle?). Suddenly loosing that melee option, with little to no foreshadowing or lead up, killed my progress and I had to lower the difficulty to actually finish the game.

 

[BrawlMan]

To take another example, I don't really like execution heavy fighting games where moves require you to do pretzel motions.

I will let you in on a secret: even most hardcore fighting game players hate pretzel motions. Ask Max Dood or Justin Wong, and they have no problem with opening their feelings on the matter. This even extends to developers themselves. For the past latter half of the 2010s, most fighting games have moved away from this. The only company that still keeps this mechanic is SNK, the company that invented pretzel motions. The only reason they even bother is for legacy reasons.

 

[Eacaraxe]

Suddenly and unexpectedly forcing players to use a different character with different skillsets, strengths and weaknesses, which can end up requiring an entirely new play style, needs to stop. I don’t know just how prevalent that is, but I have run into it on occasion.

One of the funnier moments of this, at least to me, came in the 5.x patches for Final Fantasy XIV where player control switches from the Warrior of Light (the PC) to other members of the Scions (the NPC "party"). The expectation being, FFXIV being a mature MMO where players can switch class more or less at-will, most players would have a degree of familiarity with every class in the game and therefore be able to move from one class' skillset to another fluidly as they change playable characters.

Then you get to play the Scions, and not only do the NPC classes have the PC classes' core mechanics, they're exponentially more fluid and intuitive than the actual PC jobs. Meaning, consolidated off-globals and cooldowns that do more or less the same thing or those that are typically used at the same time for synergistic effect (see, Urianger's version of AST), simplified mechanics that perfectly replicate the PC class mechanics (see, G'raha's version of BLM), while consolidating combos to single-button presses (see, Thancred's version of GNB). The latter being something Yoshi-P said as being outside design intent, even impossible within the game's coding limitations.

The end result was players saw for themselves exactly how clumsily some jobs actually played even as late as Shadowbringers, outside the well-known meme classes SMN and MNK, and how smoothly and intuitively they could play with a modicum of additional QA. I fully expect this is a large chunk of why those classes got heavily streamlined in Endwalker.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

It always feels like an offensive waste of potential when sci-fi games just use zombies for their main enemies. Even if they try to dress it up as "these whack nano-machines, son!" They're still basically zombies: they move like zombie, they gurgle like zombies and they bloody well attack and go down like piss-ass zombies too, they're fucking zombies you poorly veiled hacks! Sci-fi should inspire grand creations, disturbing malformations born of corrupt unfeeling machine and twisted alien flesh, chartless unknown evolutions with all sorts of weird tricks up their alien sleeves...not those frigging scuffly-footed boring humans again!

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Videogame NFTs need to be killed in the womb

Perhaps first consider the kind of womb hosting this thing though. It’s collectively all the greedy publishers that need to be check-mated, because next to them a bloody xenomorph looks reasonable.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I'm gonna admit, I see skill trees and I'm pretty much looking at a guide pretty soon after because if this a 30+ hour game where I it's gonna take forever to fill out the skill tree, I'm gonna set myself up for success there because I play these things for story, characters, worldbuilding and occasionally combat if it's good so I just want the character setup to work dammnit.

I also tend to do the same thing in RPGs where classes and their skills are really important because nothing sucks worse then fucking up a build out of ignorance and there's no way to change it mid-game and it takes 20-30 hours to finish. It took a me a good hour or two to figure out my party and class composition of Divinity Original Sin 2 before starting.

I know it's a saying that "Given the chance, People will optimize the fun out a game" but the inverse of that is "Haha, you picked the wrong skills and classes and now everything is a fucking fight to the death because you can't fix your mistake. Fuck you".

Maybe that's the real reason I never got into P&P Roleplaying, because all the character setup and mechanical RPG stuff is not what I'm interested in. Or maybe it's something else, because I've tried a couple different D&D-type tabletop streams and none of them have kept my interest for very long.

This is mostly why I’ve taken so long with The Witcher games. It’s perhaps no coincidence the second game being most linear was also the quickest for me to finish by far. I like the exploring and story, but the progression is mostly a pointless gamey exercise considering you’re supposed to be a master Witcher already. I mainly just want to do questing and find cool shit with minimal inventory shuffling, selling, crafting, and especially skill-picking for that trivial 1.15% upgrade to x, y or z. And ffs stop telling me I’m not strong enough yet to fight some generic looking bandit that wouldn’t be any different from another without a higher number above their heads.

 

[Dalisclock]

This is mostly why I’ve taken so long with The Witcher games. It’s perhaps no coincidence the second game being most linear was also the quickest for me to finish by far. I like the exploring and story, but the progression is mostly a pointless gamey exercise considering you’re supposed to be a master Witcher already. I mainly just want to do questing and find cool shit with minimal inventory shuffling, selling, crafting, and especially skill-picking for that trivial 1.15% upgrade to x, y or z. And ffs stop telling me I’m not strong enough yet to fight some generic looking bandit that wouldn’t be any different from another without a higher number above their heads.

It's not really justified in game either, IIRC. In Witcher 1, Geralt had come back from the dead so you could handwave him having to relearn everything, but by W3 there's no reason that should still be the case. He's had 2 full games of power build by that point but he's back to level 1 because reasons.

 

[BrawlMan]

Rank Dilution in DMC5. Istuno, why do even decide to do this? You already had the score system for styling figured out and near perfected in DMC4 and DmC: Definitive Edition. Why fuck it up and make it worse?! Whoever is leading in the next installment, never ever do it again!

The game's Style rating system is fine on Devil Hunter and below, but starts to become a problem for Son of Sparda and above. It works by having your final style score calculated based on the damage done per attack, multiplied by your current Style ranking. Thus, a single highly-damaging attack at a high Style rank can get you hundreds of more points than multiple weak attacks at low rank. This becomes a problem due to "Rank dilution", wherein your Style score is slowly dragged down over the course of a level by participating in low enemy-count optional encounters, since your final level score is aggregated over the course of every encounter you participated in (despite only one or two major encounters showing up on the end of mission screen). This means that you can open the mission with 5000 or so Style points and then almost immediately drop down to the low 4000s thanks to fighting fodder enemies inbetween big encounters and failing to get your Style high enough to where killing them is worth it. This leads to a somewhat counter-intuitive practice of entering a level and skipping the vast majority of encounters to get a higher rank, and can be compounded in certain Missions like 8 or 10, where there are very few enemies per encounter. Since you need to get 5500 points in order to S rank a Mission on Son of Sparda and 6000 on Dante Must Die, rank dilution can absolutely kill your run and drag your style points down hard.

Devil May Cry 5 / YMMV - TV Tropes

Accidental Innuendo: Much like in 4, Nero's battle theme ("Devil Trigger") is pretty easy to misinterpret. Taken Up to Eleven with its "Tropical Devil Night Remix" which makes the entire song itself sound like porn music. While the lyrics below …

tvtropes.org

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Skill trees. Do people actually find it fun when they level up for the first time and realize they need to spend half an hour planning out their leveling progression for the entire game? I can't think of anything more tedious than reading through description of skills 15 levels away trying to decide whether the fork I take at level 5 will lock me out of the best skill in the game.

Bonus points for when the further parts of the tree is hidden from you until you've already spend hours grinding to unlock them or look up a guide online.

So long as the game gives me a reasonable way to reset the skill tree so I can fix any major mistakes then I think it's fine. Having the ability to fiddle with it so you can find what works best for you is the most important thing.