Game mechanics you absolutely detest
- Thread starter MASTACHIEFPWN
- Start date
The only ones I find haven't already been mentioned for me are Mandatory (or at least just semi-mandatory) Mini-games, and Iron-sight aiming.
Mini-games are fine if they're either a core part of gameplay (your Mario Parties and stuff like that), or can be ignored with the only consequence being maybe I don't get some extra fake money or whatever. But when I have to do some random shit that has no bearing on anything that was in the game before-hand, and will never come up again (God be willing), then that shit irritates me. Especially if it's crazy hard. As for Semi-Mandatory, see the whole Mass Effect 2 mining bullshit of "You don't ever technically have to do this boring as shit mini-game. Buuuut if you don't, we'll randomly kill off the characters you've spent the game getting attached to, and are in fact the focal point of this whole game, once shit actually starts going down."
I hate Iron-sight aiming because "Hey, let's force the player to massively limit their field of view and ability to move if they ever want to hit anything". Also it really makes me wonder why shooters that have that even bother with giving you cross-hairs in the first place, because it sure as hell isn't going to help you do anything more than making sure your shots might possibly go in the direction the enemy is in.
Mini-games are fine if they're either a core part of gameplay (your Mario Parties and stuff like that), or can be ignored with the only consequence being maybe I don't get some extra fake money or whatever. But when I have to do some random shit that has no bearing on anything that was in the game before-hand, and will never come up again (God be willing), then that shit irritates me. Especially if it's crazy hard. As for Semi-Mandatory, see the whole Mass Effect 2 mining bullshit of "You don't ever technically have to do this boring as shit mini-game. Buuuut if you don't, we'll randomly kill off the characters you've spent the game getting attached to, and are in fact the focal point of this whole game, once shit actually starts going down."
I hate Iron-sight aiming because "Hey, let's force the player to massively limit their field of view and ability to move if they ever want to hit anything". Also it really makes me wonder why shooters that have that even bother with giving you cross-hairs in the first place, because it sure as hell isn't going to help you do anything more than making sure your shots might possibly go in the direction the enemy is in.
'Cinematic gameplay', where game rules are pushed aside or changed, not for the game's benefit, but for visuals sake.
A vehicle chase could be cut short by shooting, better make the enemy, vehicle, and tires bulletproof. Never mind that the player isn't trying to follow the enemy anywhere, we just want a neat vehicle chase before the gunfight.
Again, during a chase sequence, we want the enemy to taunt the player. Better let the enemy AI rubber band so badly that the vehicle chase can be held at a brisk 30 mph (≈50 km/h).
We want the player's vehicle to be on fire here, but the scripted event that causes that is too far away from the point where the player needs to get out. Better cause fire to destroy the vehicle far slower than usual. Never mind that throughout the game, "vehicle on fire" was visual shorthand for "vehicle and player death imminent".
We want the camera at this angle, it looks better. Who really needs to know what's happening in front of their character anyways?
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Also, QTE doesn't bother me unless something else is also going on visually. I don't want to have to play the game, pause, then look up on YouTube what just happened.
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Edit: Forgot about the achievements you get by playing/completing the game. Achievements should be about adding replay value, what's the point in earning one for something I need to do anyways?
A vehicle chase could be cut short by shooting, better make the enemy, vehicle, and tires bulletproof. Never mind that the player isn't trying to follow the enemy anywhere, we just want a neat vehicle chase before the gunfight.
Again, during a chase sequence, we want the enemy to taunt the player. Better let the enemy AI rubber band so badly that the vehicle chase can be held at a brisk 30 mph (≈50 km/h).
We want the player's vehicle to be on fire here, but the scripted event that causes that is too far away from the point where the player needs to get out. Better cause fire to destroy the vehicle far slower than usual. Never mind that throughout the game, "vehicle on fire" was visual shorthand for "vehicle and player death imminent".
We want the camera at this angle, it looks better. Who really needs to know what's happening in front of their character anyways?
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Also, QTE doesn't bother me unless something else is also going on visually. I don't want to have to play the game, pause, then look up on YouTube what just happened.
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Edit: Forgot about the achievements you get by playing/completing the game. Achievements should be about adding replay value, what's the point in earning one for something I need to do anyways?
I hate when games make you mash a button quickly. A lot of games do this when you are trying to pull something out of someone's hands or you lock swords. I don't find it fun or engaging to just mash a button fast, I'm not particularly good at it, and it can do some real damage on a controller. Absolutely hate that mechanic.
Escort quests don't normally bug me that much, but Dragon's Dogma's are the worst. I have one where I'm supposed to escort some young girl, but she will walk straight in front of me and get shot in the head by bandits and die in one shot. I wish I could tell her to wait, kill the archers, and then have her come.
Any time a game genre bends. Stealth sections in action games, action sections in stealth games, puzzles in action games where puzzles aren't part of the core experience, or any time you need to do some kind of race in a nonracing game. Stealth, action, puzzles, and racing are all fun when they are done properly, but WAY too many games add them in despite it not working with the mechanics or genre.
Escort quests don't normally bug me that much, but Dragon's Dogma's are the worst. I have one where I'm supposed to escort some young girl, but she will walk straight in front of me and get shot in the head by bandits and die in one shot. I wish I could tell her to wait, kill the archers, and then have her come.
Any time a game genre bends. Stealth sections in action games, action sections in stealth games, puzzles in action games where puzzles aren't part of the core experience, or any time you need to do some kind of race in a nonracing game. Stealth, action, puzzles, and racing are all fun when they are done properly, but WAY too many games add them in despite it not working with the mechanics or genre.
The only one that sticks out to me right now is QTE's. Currently going through Resident Evil 4, and not too long ago I completed God Of War, I have to say they were never fun.
I don't feel clever or skillful when I have to press a series of buttons or tap repeatedly to kill or not die. It's annoying because I've been trying to advance my skills so I'm ready for the next big challenge, and suddenly the challenge just becomes a mini game basically. And sometimes the keys flash on the screen so quickly you need to apply all your focus on one part of the screen, so you miss the action clips.
It's lame and will never be as satisfying as completing a challenge with your own skills.
I don't feel clever or skillful when I have to press a series of buttons or tap repeatedly to kill or not die. It's annoying because I've been trying to advance my skills so I'm ready for the next big challenge, and suddenly the challenge just becomes a mini game basically. And sometimes the keys flash on the screen so quickly you need to apply all your focus on one part of the screen, so you miss the action clips.
It's lame and will never be as satisfying as completing a challenge with your own skills.
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.Gundam GP01 said:
Proportion means nothing. I merely wasn't having fun, so I stopped playing.
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.
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.
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.MASTACHIEFPWN said:
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?!"
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.EMWISE94 said:
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.MASTACHIEFPWN said:
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.
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.
Yeah you can ignore them but I'm a completionist.
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.
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.
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.