Game mechanics you absolutely detest

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lacktheknack

Je suis joined jewels.
Jan 19, 2009
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Gundam GP01 said:
lacktheknack said:
Gundam GP01 said:
Racecarlock said:
Fantastic. It had me wondering why I wasn't playing a better game. Like any other game.
I really hate it when people act as if video games are supposed to be fun toys, and only fun toys.

They're a storytelling medium like any other, and they should be treated like it.

I mean, how dare the Matrix set up Neo's normal, dull corporate life before getting to the anime gunfights. Dont the film-makers know that action movies are supposed to have combat on the screen 100% of the time?
Except... You know... it took less than half an hour to do that... which is certainly better than I can say for Mafia II...
The Matrix has a run time of 136 minutes. Half an hour would be about 22% of the movie, but we can cut that down to a fifth for ease of calculation.

According to HowLongToBeat, Mafia 2's main story takes 12 and a half hours to finish. Longer if you do the side stuff, but let's just use that for now. One fifth of that is 2.5 hours. Mafia 2 would literally have to make you lift boxes, sell cigarettes, and scrub toilets for more than the entire run time of The Matrix for your point to be a valid comparison.

Do you really think that you scrubbed toilets for two and a half hours in Mafia 2?
The game could be 500 hours long and I'd still be unhappy if it made me do menial "world building" (right, totally) jobs for an hour of it.

Proportion means nothing. I merely wasn't having fun, so I stopped playing.
 

Flammablezeus

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Dec 19, 2013
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Having every contextual option appear on-screen as a button prompt. Hello, I know that I can grab people with B, that hasn't changed the whole game. I figured it out after the first guy had a B hovering over him.

Wall hacks as a game mechanic. The only game it suited was Blood Dragon, since you're a futuristic, overpowered cyborg. It does sort of suit Batman, but you shouldn't be able to just keep it on. Maybe for a few seconds with a long cooldown or something, but otherwise it just becomes the optimal and least pleasing way to play the game. That's the worst combination.
 

putowtin

I'd like to purchase an alcohol!
Jul 7, 2010
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MASTACHIEFPWN said:
tippy2k2 said:
Not to be a jerk about it and maybe I misunderstand you but it sounds like you got pissed off at Mass Effect 2 because you made a mistake and the game made you pay for it...
But the thing is I didn't really make a mistake-
What is usually supposed to happen is you wake legion, then your ship is attacked by the collectors, then you do his mission.
In my case, my ship was attacked by the collectors, I woke legion, and then did his mission. Note that waking him involves a mere 1-minute conversation. that's it- but I take it the game considered that a recruitment mission (Although it was not a mission at all) and counted that against me. I find that ridiculous.
But wouldn't your mistake be... my crew has been attacked and instead of heading off to save them I'm going to swan around and do other things.

This isn't a bad game mechanics, this is a game rewarding you for being organized or punishing you for ignoring your crew whilst you pop back to Omega for another pint and a lap dance!

My pet peves? QTE & unskippable cutscenes, just started a second runthrough of WatchDogs, sure the first time I played I wanted to see the opening, second time? "why the hell can't I skip this 10 minute intro?!"
 

JET1971

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Apr 7, 2011
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Boss fights like old NES games had. Boss launches predictable instakill attack unless you stand in X spot or jump at the right moment, is immune to all attacks except 1 and that is part of the boss power buildup for the instakill attack when it suddenly shows it's vulnerable spot to 1 weapon. Stupid mechanic, once you learn the pattern there is no challenge. Was great when I played on the NES in 88-89 but since the late 90's there is no excuse for using those gimmicks.

Forced POV in RPG games, either third or over the shoulder forced. Infact over the shoulder cam can go fuck itself as far as I am concerned. Great to see what's directly in front of you like that bottle of ale you do not want to steal or the mug you need to pick up but absolute crap if you are on the left side of something like a tree or a bit of bulkhead and over half your screen is now that(up close and extremely crap looking now that you get a view of the texture that close). Also over the shoulder makes it hard for me to maneuver my character since I mainly played FPS games and those few forced third games I played were behind the head camera, yes I run into many things and that could be prevented by giving me a choice of POV.

Equipment/weapon degradation that is not done right. Far Cry 2 had absolute horrible degradation such as in the southern map driving any vehicle from the top to the bottom will end up needing a new vehicle once you get there even if you were not shot once or hit anything more than a tumbleweed. Weapons were even worse because they could jam on you forcing you to swap out or fiddle with it before the first magazine was even fired off. Done right they degrade but far slower and where you can repair between missions for 90%+ weapon or repair after a series of mission but the last couple the weapon was showing its age.

1 hit instakill from splash damage from frag weapons if you are over halfway out of the radius. a 5 meter splash damage weapon should not kill you if you are 3 meters from the center unless you have over a 3rd of your hitpoints already gone and never should you go from full health to dead if you are on the very edge of that explosion. Distance from explosion should determine damage received increasing in damage as you get closer.

1 hit instakill cheap shots based on an NPC or player from a crit that is 100% unavoidable. It is just cheap to have that "I win" button because "I got a crit for 100k hp and you have 10k hp". Cryptic is bad about giving NPC's an "I win" button in their MMO's(Elite Borg Plasma Invisa-Torps from cubes comes to mind).

Forced vehicle levels in FPS games. Either you are forced to use the gun or you are forced to drive or a combo of both. If 90% of the game is the player using his/her own feet and legs to get from point A to B, 8% is cutscene travel or non action oriented then do not force 2% of the game to be wielding a poorly optimized weapon for fast aiming while being driven by a horrid NPC driver or really forcing the player to get into the vehicle and be stuck in it until the scene is complete and X number of bad guys are dead.

Kill cams(jump cams in racing game as well)... Oh how I despise these! I do not like them when it is a FPS. If someone kills me or I kill someone else I should not see what they are doing after the death and they should not see what I am doing if I killed them, but that's the tolerable version. the ones I find intolerable are the ones that rip the camera away and show the "epic" kill like Skyrims killcams. Having to watch the umteenth 15 second video no matter how pretty it looks of me killing the umpteenth skeleton is annoying, but not only that it is disorienting to have the camera swap to killcam while I was lining up my next target and have to wait for the cam to finish. This gets worse with the more action related the game or combat is. A jump cam just before a turn in a racing game and a corner can be missed that could easily be taken, or in a shooter you have a huge chance of missing the next target you had just started aiming at but now your aiming at a rock 25 feet to it's right because the mouse kept moving when the cam started.
 

EMWISE94

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Aug 22, 2013
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Three spring to mind.

1) Party Management: This is one of the reasons I get turned away by JRPGs, I fell out with FF because of it. I don't like being forced to micro manage every single person in the party making sure they level up their stats properly ESPECIALLY it the number of the number of party members is greater than the number allowed in a single battle. I don't mind it as much in XCOM: Enemy Unknown though, maybe because there's more strategy to it that just taking turns to hit each other. but speaking of leveling systems.

2) Leveling Up: I actually don't mind this as much when its done right but its still a bug bear of mine. I'm someone who likes it when a game test your skill rather than your patience, its the reason why I haven't finished Pokémon Y yet because the next hurdle to jump is too high and I have to grind my team to get to jumping it and as we all know the grinding slows to crawl once you hit lvl 30+. I enjoy progression in games based more on skill than anything, one of the reasons I like Terraria so much, sure you grind for materials but if you're competent enough in combat you can face certain bosses with lesser material and such. But yeah pretty much, I dislike grinding for levels, it becomes tedious after a while.

3) Vague Health Systems: Why fix what isnt broke? Health bars are a beautiful way to let you know how many more hits you can take, don't wanna clutter up your game screen? fine! give me a nice and clear indicator of how many hits I have left, have my character have different walk/limp cycles maybe, some damage decals perhaps? DO NOT wash the colour out and make everything go black and white! It was hard enough in Killzone 2 to see where shots are coming from when everythings grey and brown, its even harder when there's blood all over your screen and now everything looks like a Rorschach diagram!
 

KarmaTheAlligator

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Mar 2, 2011
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EMWISE94 said:
I'm someone who likes it when a game test your skill rather than your patience, its the reason why I haven't finished Pokémon Y yet because the next hurdle to jump is too high and I have to grind my team to get to jumping it and as we all know the grinding slows to crawl once you hit lvl 30+.
Battle Chateau is your friend in this case, as well as the Exp Share (the new mechanics for it are awesome to avoid grinding, or have your new team members catch up to the others). I'm actually surprised you're having trouble with that, as most people say the game is too easy.
 

bug_of_war

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Nov 30, 2012
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MASTACHIEFPWN said:
TL;DR: Mass Effect 2 fucked up because I made a stupid choice, and I ruined my perfect play through.
No...you fucked up. The game allows as many missions after everyone is taken to be done, however after they're taken more people will die for each mission not taken. Take 1 mission, Kelly dies. Take 2, Dr Chakwas dies. Any more than that and I'm pretty sure you loose everyone. Don't blame the game for screwing up your perfect play through, you dun goofed and the game had an actual consequence.


Game mechanics I dislike? Overly complex game mechanics. If it takes 5 minutes to explain how to do one action, you're doing it wrong. The best games aren't overly complex, at least that's my opinion.

-RPG leveling skill trees in none RPG games. I don't mind waiting to be given a better weapon/abillity, but don't tease me with it in the pause screen and be all, "OOOOH LOOK SHINY, IT TAKES SUPER LONG TO GET THIS". Just give me the fucking thing.
 

lord.jeff

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Oct 27, 2010
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Checkpoints halfway through a boss fight, it cheapens the win for me.
New game mechanics added in during the final boss fight.
 

fhmy

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Aug 2, 2010
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Collectibles. It seems like they're just there because having them is a staple at this point. Most of the time they don't give any sort of meaningful reward, usually inconsequential extras like concept art. Collecting them bogs down the pace if you're constantly scouring through each area, and it's even worse if they're on the map in some open-world game, because that just means time to play connect the fucking dots.

Yeah you can ignore them but I'm a completionist.
 

TerranV

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Feb 19, 2014
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Games that require weapon/armor forging. I can't stand having to grind out random drops to get all the rediculous materials just to make one weapon. Hell in KH 1.5 Remix I got to the end of the game and said "FUCK THIS" to synthesis.
 

Zaldin

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Sep 28, 2009
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Entire QTE cutscenes (Like RE4's Krauser battle, fuck that shit). As well as checkpoints before unskippable cutscenes into hard bossfights.
 

Cid Silverwing

Paladin of The Light
Jul 27, 2008
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RNG gameplay.

I seem to be cursed with the ability to reliably fuck up on anything less than 100% (Final Fantasy Tactics and XCOM Enemy Unknown are serial offenders), yet the enemy reliably succeeds on even 10% (when enemy Time Mages are casting Haste on their own that are Zodiac-wise incompatible or getting crit'd from across the fucking map by the weakest alien and already lose an operative while your entire team missed on 50%).

I despise rolling dice to see whether I succeed at anything, because it seems I never do. Luck doesn't make for a good story to tell your friends afterwards, skillful execution does.
 

SonOfVoorhees

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Aug 3, 2011
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Escort missions. Especially those where the person just walks into danger like an idiot. When you want them to wait or let you clear out the enemy. Instead the idiots walks blindly into danger and you have to kill everything quickly.
 

pspman45

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Sep 1, 2010
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I've been borrowing a friend's 3DS to play Fire Emblem Awakening, and I just absolutely HATE the whole "oh no, reinforcements that suddenly appear behind you without warning and get to act immediately after appearing, killing ALL OF MY MAGES AND SHIT"
it is literally the least fair thing ever, so if anyone tells me that Lunatic Classic is the way that the game is meant to be played, then you can kindly fuck right off
 

MASTACHIEFPWN

Will fight you and lose
Mar 27, 2010
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bug_of_war said:
MASTACHIEFPWN said:
TL;DR: Mass Effect 2 fucked up because I made a stupid choice, and I ruined my perfect play through.
No...you fucked up. The game allows as many missions after everyone is taken to be done, however after they're taken more people will die for each mission not taken. Take 1 mission, Kelly dies. Take 2, Dr Chakwas dies. Any more than that and I'm pretty sure you loose everyone. Don't blame the game for screwing up your perfect play through, you dun goofed and the game had an actual consequence.


Game mechanics I dislike? Overly complex game mechanics. If it takes 5 minutes to explain how to do one action, you're doing it wrong. The best games aren't overly complex, at least that's my opinion.

-RPG leveling skill trees in none RPG games. I don't mind waiting to be given a better weapon/abillity, but don't tease me with it in the pause screen and be all, "OOOOH LOOK SHINY, IT TAKES SUPER LONG TO GET THIS". Just give me the fucking thing.
As I've explained to others- The mechanic in question I hate (admittedly, I didn't go into on the original post) Was the irreversible set of events that happens when selecting the galactic map after acquiring the IFF. Once you select the map there is no going back- unlike everything else on the game where you are given a choice before you do something. This is forced upon you- and you are not warned. EDI alerts you that the IFF is "Almost ready", but nothing more than that. you are given no option to say you aren't ready for the irreversible events that will start the countdown, it just happens. This is unlike anything else in the game. This is the only thing that is forced on you without consent.
 

Thedutchjelle

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Mar 31, 2009
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Rocket pods (or similar heavy anti-ground weapons) on fast moving air vehicles.

I've had these against me in Bf4, Bf3, and in Planetside 2.

It's terrible. You have no where to run or to hide, and in most games infantry or (most) ground vehicles aren't equipped to kill jets fast enough before they leave the combat zone again. Bringing this up anywhere on the respective game's fora will usually result in a storm of "Jet flying is hard" "Jets are supposed to be OP" "L3rn to pl4y" and other useless comments. One good pilot on the enemy team shouldn't be able to casually slaughter everybody without anyone having a fair chance of killing it.

KarmaTheAlligator said:
One of the biggest one for me are un-winnable fights where you're dominating from the start (basically, a fight where you're going to lose no matter what, because the story demands it). Many games do this, while also allowing you do either get super powerful weapons or character beforehand and it's just annoying.
Lufia 2 did this in a good way. Somewhere at the end of 1/3th into the game you meet one of the Ultimate Bad Guys. It's supposed to be a curb stomp battle so he can casually slaughter your whole party.
However, if you went in (over)leveled and put up a real fight you can eventually grind him to death. As a reward you get a pretty sick weapon too. In a cutscene after your victory you still "die" but it's way more satisfying than losing the actual fight.
 

Mr.Squishy

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Apr 14, 2009
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- Escort missions
- 'Defend X for so and so long' you know, like waiting for an elevator and holding off enemies
- Shitty moral choices
- Situations in which only one of the game's many approaches is valid
- Quicktime events, especially when it's of the type 'Wiggle the left stick to break free!'
- Puzzles filled with absolute moon logic. It's one of the reasons I can't stand adventure games, and I imagine that makes a good lot of people quite cross with me
- Over-tutorializing or under-tutorializing
- Forced 'Cinematic' moments, especially if it's an escape
- Turret sections that go on forever
- A game mechanic that seemed like a really good idea to shove down the player's throat. Singularity did this particularly egregiously with its time mechanic.

And all of this

seaweed said:
Cover shooting

Poorly designed forced tutorials (For a good example, 2/3 of Portal 1 is a tutorial and it's fun as hell! But when it's like Look Up, Look Down, Look Left, Look Right, are these controls okay or do you want them inverted? Use WASD to move. Space to jump. E to use. It's like OH MY GOD GET ON WITH IT, 99.9% of the people playing this have played a video game before)

Region gating without good reason (There's a blackout in Lumiose City! You can't go any farther! That doesn't make any sense! In fact I can see the lights in the buildings up ahead are actually very much ON!)

Forced slow-walk sections where NPCs deliver exposition to you

Obvious content padding(Go collect three macguffins down these three separate hallways to open this door)

Bullet sponge enemies

Mechanics that are highly incongruous with each other or the story of the game

Level design that is just a straight hallway for the entire game

Ooh, look at this pretty thing exploding in the skybox. Wow, so cool. Wow. Except that was totally played out back in like 2009.

Press F to airstrike. Press F to breach this door. Press F to comfort Elizabeth. Press F to watch cutscene.
 

Lilikins

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Jan 16, 2014
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hmm, donno if it would count as a game mechanic but more of a control. Does anyone remember the Mario party games for the N64 where you had to rotate the joystick with your thumb/hand?
I detest that..blisters and bloody controllers were the outcome...I beat that stupid minigame isle though so, was worth it.

Also giving nods to the escort missions where the NPC will 'yell' at you that you should hurry, all the while whilst walking so slow that a dead turtle could probably bypass them in some way.
 

KarmaTheAlligator

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Mar 2, 2011
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Thedutchjelle said:
KarmaTheAlligator said:
One of the biggest one for me are un-winnable fights where you're dominating from the start (basically, a fight where you're going to lose no matter what, because the story demands it). Many games do this, while also allowing you do either get super powerful weapons or character beforehand and it's just annoying.
Lufia 2 did this in a good way. Somewhere at the end of 1/3th into the game you meet one of the Ultimate Bad Guys. It's supposed to be a curb stomp battle so he can casually slaughter your whole party.
However, if you went in (over)leveled and put up a real fight you can eventually grind him to death. As a reward you get a pretty sick weapon too. In a cutscene after your victory you still "die" but it's way more satisfying than losing the actual fight.
I'm not sure I'd like that, actually. Sure, you get a good reward for it, but the story still goes on saying you lost.
 

4Aces

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May 29, 2012
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Lemme sum up everything I have read so far (except for the one person that likes rail shooters): Anything the removes the player from immersion or controlling the game their way.