Game mechanics you're glad have (virtually) died.

[Worgen]

I I do not know about Eternal, as I barely got into it and later traded the game in. Doom 4 on the other hand, shows damage on bosses with health meters. So you get both. Gears 5 does health meters for mooks and mini bosses. I think the major bosses don't get any. Vanquish does both as well, but you're mostly fighting robots so that definitely makes sense. Plus, you can blow off the limbs of robots and they'll change tactics and become suicide bombers or alternate their attacks depending on the robot. Bosses and mini bosses actually have their names displayed and gets a big health bar in the center of the screen.

On bosses I think health bars are more warranted. Unless you do multiple play throughs you will only encounter them once so it can be really hard to determine how effective you are being on a boss with a lot of hp. Unless a boss has a big obvious weakpoint that you can tell you are doing damage too. But, I could easily go either way with boss hp bars, as long as there is an obvious way to tell you are doing damage to them.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Maybe this isn't the spirit of the thread's intention but...

Back in my day, when we had to walk both ways uphill in the snow to get to an arcade, the games would make you start in the beginning when you lost all your lives! And that mechanic carried over to console games until someone invented the "save" game. (I think Zelda is credited with that?)

So the best game mechanic to have died is the starting over from the beginning mechanic.

 

[laggyteabag]

Having played BioShock and the Mass Effect remasters, recently: hacking mini-games.

They're not hard, but they are just relentlessly abundant. The hardest part is just being *bothered* to do them for the billionth time.

 

[Gordon_4]

Having played BioShock and the Mass Effect remasters, recently: hacking mini-games.

They're not hard, but they are just relentlessly abundant. The hardest part is just being *bothered* to do them for the billionth time.

And yet people complained when they were removed from Mass Effect 3.......go figure.

 

[wings012]

On bosses I think health bars are more warranted. Unless you do multiple play throughs you will only encounter them once so it can be really hard to determine how effective you are being on a boss with a lot of hp. Unless a boss has a big obvious weakpoint that you can tell you are doing damage too. But, I could easily go either way with boss hp bars, as long as there is an obvious way to tell you are doing damage to them.

My friend started playing Dying Light 2 and he thought the health bars in that game for regular enemies ruined his immersion. I'm definitely leaning no for regular enemies, though it depends on the genre. Stuff like ARPGs I'm perfectly fine with. FPSes are a definite no. RPGs tend to have rather bloatey numbers and you kinda need them so you can tell whether you are undergeared/leveled or not.

For action game bosses, I kinda go either way I guess. I do feel that when health bars are low for bosses, I end up being greedy and shooting myself in the foot in games like Dark Souls.

I was perfectly fine without health bars in Monster Hunter(World specifically). But I guess stuff in that game have so goddamn much health that seeing it might just serve to frustrate. They do have various cues regarding a monster's status though. Like they will change areas or behaviour at certain health thresholds. And there can be visual cues too, like the monster limping or whatever.

I think something like that can be a cool middle ground between having and not having a health bar. It's more work, but having visible injury/damage and animation changes can give the relative impression of how healthy your enemy is without the immersion breaking of health bars.

 

[Worgen]

And yet people complained when they were removed from Mass Effect 3.......go figure.

The only thing worse then a hacking minigame is having nothing. Cause it makes it feel like you are just opening a door (sometimes with a % chance of working).

 

[Specter Von Baren]

The only thing worse then a hacking minigame is having nothing. Cause it makes it feel like you are just opening a door (sometimes with a % chance of working).

I actually enjoyed the hacking mini game from Bioshock. I dunno, like you said, having it just be a % chance of working or not is just... lame.

I feel like it was done best in the old Ratchet and Clank games where it was used for either plot progress or bonus area stuff and not a constant mechanic though.

 

[Worgen]

I actually enjoyed the hacking mini game from Bioshock. I dunno, like you said, having it just be a % chance of working or not is just... lame.

I didn't mind it, but it was silly to jump up and hack while hovering in midair. Although, by the end it had worn out its welcome.

 

[EvilRoy]

I didn't mind it, but it was silly to jump up and hack while hovering in midair. Although, by the end it had worn out its welcome.

That's my main complaint about hacking minigames personally. It's not that the minigames are esoteric or weird - functionally it's just about developing a reasonably engaging task to represent removing a barrier so it really could be anything - it's how often you do it.

In these games like Skyrim or fallout or bioshock you either choose to engage with hacking/lockpicking or you don't. If you don't engage you basically never see it and will probably do fine through the game. If you do engage with it you're gonna be seeing the minigames like every five to ten minutes of play time. If you spend skill points on them you've basically locked yourself into putting up with this shit for the whole game, or be slightly hobbled by having wasted points. Depending on the game that may not matter, but in some you might have artificially raised the end game difficulty significantly by not committing to an upgrade path.

So yeah. Class commitments and over application kills those games for me.

 

[BrawlMan]

Having played BioShock and the Mass Effect remasters, recently: hacking mini-games.

They're not hard, but they are just relentlessly abundant. The hardest part is just being *bothered* to do them for the billionth time.

I never cared much for hacking many games either, I'm glad they disappeared from gaming. It was another trend that was just done for the sake of following it and doing it without much variation, because other popular games were doing it.

And yet people complained when they were removed from Mass Effect 3.......go figure.

Because unpleasable fans are hypocritical and be biatches.

Although, by the end it had worn out its welcome.

That's the problem, that mechanic wore out it's welcome in a lot of games. It became glorified padding and just extra busy work, that does not add much overall play time.

 

[Worgen]

That's my main complaint about hacking minigames personally. It's not that the minigames are esoteric or weird - functionally it's just about developing a reasonably engaging task to represent removing a barrier so it really could be anything - it's how often you do it.

That's the problem, that mechanic wore out it's welcome in a lot of games. It became glorified padding and just extra busy work, that does not add much overall play time.

Now that I think about it, in Bioshock, couldn't you either do the minigame or just click something with a % chance to just auto hack?

 

[BrawlMan]

Now that I think about it, in Bioshock, couldn't you either do the minigame or just click something with a % chance to just auto hack?

I don't know about the auto hack part. You are going to have to look that one up.

 

[EvilRoy]

Now that I think about it, in Bioshock, couldn't you either do the minigame or just click something with a % chance to just auto hack?

I can't remember which bioshock it was but yeah there was an upgrade you could get that would let you auto hack and if it failed you take a bit of damage or set off an alarm or something.

 

[Worgen]

I don't know about the auto hack part. You are going to have to look that one up.

I can't remember which bioshock it was but yeah there was an upgrade you could get that would let you auto hack and if it failed you take a bit of damage or set off an alarm or something.

Yeah, it was the first one, there was an autohack thing you could make.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Games with a party system that game over if the protagonist dies. My first encounter with it was in Okage but the most egregious was Persona 3 since there are INSTANT DEATH effects in this game!!!

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Games with a party system that game over if the protagonist dies. My first encounter with it was in Okage but the most egregious was Persona 3 since there are INSTANT DEATH effects in this game!!!

Actually! That brings up another point. Random dice roll instant KO effects can drown in a ditch too. It's BS to have it happen to you and it's either broken or worthless if you have abilities that can do it since it's either good enough to be all you do or too bad to be worth interacting with at all.

 

[thebobmaster]

Sync kills in Mass Effect 3...I still fucking hate Banshees for that reason alone. I should be dreading fighting an enemy because of their overall power, not because I have to worry about getting unlucky and having one teleport halfway across the room to shove her hand in Shepard's chest.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Actually! That brings up another point. Random dice roll instant KO effects can drown in a ditch too. It's BS to have it happen to you and it's either broken or worthless if you have abilities that can do it since it's either good enough to be all you do or too bad to be worth interacting with at all.

Oh yeah, especially ones that are do nothing (so there's no point) or make you lose. Either result is not making things fun.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Sync kills in Mass Effect 3...I still fucking hate Banshees for that reason alone. I should be dreading fighting an enemy because of their overall power, not because I have to worry about getting unlucky and having one teleport halfway across the room to shove her hand in Shepard's chest.

What's a Sync Kill?

 

[thebobmaster]

Basically, in Mass Effect 3, there are certain enemies that, if you get within melee range, can instantly kill you. That kill is called a Sync Kill, for some reason. Off the top of my head, the enemies that can do that are Brutes, Banshees, Atlases, and Scions (which are only in multiplayer). Of the 4, the Banshees are the worst because they can teleport into melee range, then instantly kill you before you get out of melee range.