Gaming Cardinal Sins

[jamail77]

2. Thous shalt not have ridiculously long killing/death animations that can't be skipped.
4. Thou shalt not have more cutscenes than actual gameplay.

As sort of a related cardinal sin: Thou shalt not have cutscenes or other non-interactive moments, including those that start off as QTEs before turning into these moments, showcasing thy character executing actions much cooler than anything yon players can do themselves or anything yon players can do as dynamically in a 1:1 controls fashion.

5. Thou shalt not exercise trial-and-error gameplay, where error results in instant death (unless the game is centered on this mechanic).
6. Not allowing the player to make custom saves that do not update. Games that exclusively use autosave (like the arkham games) disallow the player to quickly replay segments they liked. Sometimes I just want to fight bosses - in revengeance I can't do that. I always have to replay the game if I want to fight bosses.

Also,

Thou shalt not try to pass off badly implemented trial-and-error gameplay as something "thought intensive" or otherwise non-monotonous especially in a puzzle solving game

and

Thou shalt not include an autosave system only, yet also, not include an option to start at or replay specific moments of the game. Thou shalt doth one or the other, regardless whether yon game works in a mission/level type of way or a more sandbox/open world manner.
-Thou shalt strive for both a custom save option and the latter option when feasible.
-When broken thou shalt, at least, include a boss battle mode, especially if boss battles are FAR superior than previous game*
*(since you mentioned the Arkham games) as broken by Arkham City

Thou shalt not be dishonest with thy consumer.

Yeah, and here's a sub-level cardinal sin for dishonesty: Thou shalt not advertise characters as being a bigger part of the game than they end up being.

So much wasted potential in Deadshot and Lady Shiva in Batman: Arkham Origins. Heck, even ones that weren't just shoved into side missions were underwhelming: Looking at you Deathstroke. It's not that I thought the game would live up to the series namesake; heck, I called the Joker overtaking the story bit (not in the exact way it played out, admittedly). But still.

Thou shalt not make the PC version of a game require more resources to put out worse graphics than the console one.

I hate bad optimization period, the worse graphics is just an extra layer of nonsense. My laptop is perfectly capable of running some newer games, but I still have to lower the settings to minimum because it was never optimized for PC.

This was especially frustrating when I accidentally spilled tomato soup on the laptop because I was too lazy to move it to the side and just get up, grab the bowl,, and bring it down to me. Noooooo, instead I had to be stupid and struggle to reach the soup on the table, to the right and above my head, while I had my laptop lying on my stomach while I lie on the floor . That crippled my laptop, but it was still in good enough condition after repair to run aforementioned games at lower settings if those games had been properly optimized. Now, it just can't run them at a decent FPS, if at all. Obviously the tomato soup thing is my fault, but it's annoying that my laptop is perfectly capable nonetheless. Then again, it is meant mostly for school and even so, a dedicated gaming rig a laptop is not meant to be.

OT: I think this [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comicsandcosplay/comics/critical-miss/8230-The-Collectable-Doodad-Commandments] is appropriate as well.

 

[Bofus Teefus]

I'm overwhelmed with thought right now, so I'll only post the most immediate ones that come to mind.

"Thou shalt not implement stick wiggling QTE's"

SERIOUSLY! Any other form of QTE is ok, stick wiggling or rotating? No.. Please, it hurts.

You win. Seriously, this particularly crappy form of QTE had to be invented by someone who never gamed before in his/her life. I can't do these with my thumb, either. I have to use my palm, and shake my hand for the wiggling QTE, and do this weird arm thing for the rotating QTE. Neither looks right if I've got a cam on.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I haven't played this game so I could be wrong but based on what I've heard, there are forced stealth segments in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2. So,

Game: Lords of Shadow 2
Sin: Thou shalt not take an unmeasurable bad-ass character like Dracula and weaken him to the point that there are mandatory stealth sections

Another one I have,

Games with unskippable cutscenes, long cutscenes or, QTEs within their cutscenes:
Sin: Thou shalt NOT surprise players with a QTE during the course of a cutscene. I hear this was a source of grief within Resident Evil 4

and finally,

Game: Alice - Madness Returns
Sin: Thou shalt NOT boss-tease!

 

[Wereduck]

If thy save system is entirely restricted to auto-saves/checkpoints then thy (thou-est?) save system had best fucking work reliably; i.e. actually save the game state properly.

For example if there's a checkpoint right before a boss fight and I get 1/2 through the boss fight but then die and am forced to go back to the auto-save I should still have the items that I used in my previous and futile attempt. 'Amy' fucks variations of this up constantly (thanks weapon degradation!) and I believe, though I haven't played, 'Dead Rising' manages similar shenanigans. I also feel that I kind of need to mention Mega Man games for, if you used them during the fight, usually forcing you to leave the area to refill E-Tanks which is just (usually) needless busy work.

I believe the word you're looking for is "thyst".
...and yes, I don't think that's a glitch but it is supremely annoying. So this boss just killed me... I'd better take him on again right away only this time I'll be half-equipped - good plan!

as for me:
In a QTE thou shallt not use keys with no assigned function in normal gameplay.

I'm looking at you Tomb Raider - I can't count the number of times I was insta-gibbed because I was using mouse & WASD when a QTE suddenly called for me to press "K". Typing of the Dead gets a pass because that's the point of the game, everyone else needs to get their heads out of their asses.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Thou shalt not institute a grid-based inventory system without the ability to turn items 90 degrees to fit them better. I'm looking at you, Path of Exile.

 

[GalanDun]

Thou shalt not make the PC version of a game require more resources to put out worse graphics than the console one.

I hate bad optimization period, the worse graphics is just an extra layer of nonsense. My laptop is perfectly capable of running some newer games, but I still have to lower the settings to minimum because it was never optimized for PC.

So's my PC. My PC is more powerful than the Xbox or GameCube and yet I can't run games at their level even in games made for PC, like Left 4 Dead 2.
And it's utterly ridiculous how a lot of games that work on the Xbox 360 (Which is, again, less powerful than my PC) don't work on my PC at a decent speed without lowering the graphical quality. Which is why I like consoles.

Also:
Thou Shalt Not have mouse controls ported 1:1 to joysticks. DooM 3 has this issue and so did Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

 

[MidnightRaith]

Game: Various, example: Mass Effect series

Sin: Thou shalt not have unremappable controls on PC.

We are not playing with a controller with around 12 buttons counting a D-Pad. There are options. No reason to even have a contextual button for everything. Specifically though, I despise that ME1 has crouch mapped to the right Ctrl button. My hands are small, Bioware. I hit the Windows key in the heat of the moment. Dammit, the C button is not even used, why can't I map crouch to C?

 

[FPLOON]

Thou shalt not glitch when said game feels like it
*looks at Sonic 06*

Thou shalt not lack button customization
*looks at certain fighting games*

Thou shalt not remind me of one's own DLC
*looks at [insert game here]*

Thou shalt not pad out game for "100% completion" sake
*looks at [insert game here]*

I was also going to add a "thou shalt not mimic real life without proper context", but then I realized that I have not [yet?] played a David Cage game...

 

[Pizzarand]

"Thine Sequels shall not have less content for no apparent reason. Honor the Sequel as a way of improving yon game, not abusing it"

I'm looking at you here, Sims 4.

"Thou shall not assume thine player careth about a character, if thine player has no reason to care about said character."

"Moral choice systems are a ruse of the Bad Developer. He tempts thee with the promise of increaseed replayability and greater consequence of thine players acctions, but heed not his word. Following his path, instead you'll only find Having-to-replay-the-game-to-see-all-the-content and Answering-the-same-question-over-and-over-again. No, there is nothing but pain along that path. Stay away, and thine players shall thank thee"

 

[snappydog]

Game: 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors
Cardinal Sin: Slow ass text scrolling!

Seriously, its the only reason I didn't get far, I was annoyed that I was reading the text far faster than it was scrolling and to my knowledge, there is no way to speed it up. Ace Attorney has it to a degree with slow text crawls, but its usually followed by funny character animations and you can make text appear immediately with B.

The thing about 999 is that you CAN speed up the text.......
if you've already seen it.
So there's no way to speed through text on your first playthrough, unfortunately, but after getting one ending the subsequent playthroughs should go much quicker as you'll be skipping through all the bits you've already read. You'll still have to do all the puzzles again, though; Virtue's Last Reward handled this much better IMO by allowing you to just jump straight past the bits you'd done to the important choices, therefore removing the need to skip through text or do the very first puzzle for the umpteenth time.

A couple of sins from Vanquish now, which I'm otherwise rather enjoying:
Thou shalt make it clear whether a QTE requires a single button press or continued mashing. I'll know in future that Vanquish QTEs require mashing, but the first time an 'X' came up and flashed intermittently at me I just pressed each time it flashed, not realising that it meant 'mash'. Needless to say, I died, leading to my next sin.

Thou shalt ensure that thy checkpoints are reasonably spaced. More than once I've stopped playing in frustration having got through a very lengthy battle only to die on some stupid environmental event that I didn't know was coming. It would be nice to have a checkpoint BETWEEN those two things.

 

[OneCatch]

Thou shalt include some form of full Anti-Aliasing. Seriously, it's been around for a decade, there's no excuse not to have it in modern games.

Thou shalt not overly restrict or railroad character classes in RPGs (by, say, only allowing one class to actually hit the side of a barn with all four types of gun in-game).

Thou shalt include the option to autosave openworld games (for those of us who forget to F5 before wandering into a dungeon after 3 hours of unsaved play)

Thou shalt not ruin slowpaced stealth franchises by encouraging open aggression and evading pursuers instead of staying quiet in the first place.

Thou shalt not pad-out openworld games with excessive crafting and collection quests.

Thou shalt not continuously release paid DLC while significant gameplay problems still exist in the vanilla game. In fact, thou shalt not release simple unitpacks, gunpacks, and cosmetic changes as paid DLC at all.


Also, this:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comicsandcosplay/comics/critical-miss/8230-The-Collectable-Doodad-Commandments

 

[Kerethos]

Though shall not portion up thy game and sell it in pieces.

Seriously, no more DLC bullshit. Give me a proper expansion and I will probably buy it - provided I enjoyed your game.

A short side mission, character skin, a bunch of items, a character... these are like buying individual pieces to eventually assemble a sandwich. Just sell me the whole fucking thing from the start. Then ask if I want another later.

It's rather telling that my reaction to any new game coming out nowadays has become "I'll just wait a year of so for the complete version", but that is what I do.

capcha: cucumber sandwich[footnote]If that sandwich was a game then the cucumber would be sold separately, a few months later, or as a bonus if I buy the sandwich several weeks in advance.[/footnote]

 

[sageoftruth]

Thou shalt include some form of full Anti-Aliasing. Seriously, it's been around for a decade, there's no excuse not to have it in modern games.

Thou shalt not overly restrict or railroad character classes in RPGs (by, say, only allowing one class to actually hit the side of a barn with all four types of gun in-game).

This one I can forgive, but only if the game is designed with enough versatility. If I choose to be a Bard, then I'd better be able to sing my way past the final boss, instead of having to grind myself into an sub-par fighter character.

 

[sageoftruth]

Thou shalt not pad-out openworld games with excessive crafting and collection quests.

And walking. I hate spending 80% of a game trying to get from one place to another with nothing significant happening.

 

[sageoftruth]

Thou shalt not have an invisible "Combat area" which players are forbidden to leave.

Thou shalt not forbid players to think for themselves.

Thous shalt not mistake "required grinding" for "difficulty".

Thou shalt not mistake "cutscenes" for "story".

 

[sageoftruth]

1. If thy game has combat mechanics, thou shalt ensure that thy combat mechanics work.
1a. If thy game has dodging, thou shalt ensure that there are things which can be dodged.
1b. If thy game has group tactics, thou shalt ensure that the team AI follows them.
1c. If thy game has many attack options, thou shalt ensure that one is not better than the others in every way.
1d. If thy game requires clever use of many attack options, thou shalt not make it cumbersome to switch between them.

 

[Delock]

If thine game world is large enough to require Fast Travel, and the areas fast traveled to are massive, and thy fast travel points are not spots of safety and refuge (ala Dark Souls) then thou shalt not require the player to hunt down a fast travel point located only at the entrance to thine area and not at thy end in order to Fast Travel

Offender: Borderlands 2 (I recently was powerleveling a character with a friend and we wanted to return to town to dump all the quests)

Appdendum: Should thou install limitations on the rules of Fast Travelling (no combat and so on), thou shalt make sure those limits aren't finicky and have a system in place to ensure the player knows what's stopping their Fast Travel (hunting down a nonthreatening mob that registers as a hostile enemy without any clue as to where this 6 inch bug with a grudge or the hostile enemy that's well outside whatever radar you have is has caused so many "Can I travel now?!" moments, but I can't remember the specific offenders for stuff like this)

 

[Yellowbeard]

Thou shalt ABSOLUTELY NOT use set-length loading screens regardless of actual loading time, making me wait 30 seconds to reload a fight when my machine actually loads it in 2. (Mass-Effect 2)

Thou shalt not carelessly program mouse control with stupid amounts of acceleration. (Bioshock, Dead Space)

Thou shalt not issue patches that break the community-made mods that made your game playable in the first place. (Dark Souls PC)

Thou shalt not require me to log in to play single player.

Thou shalt not set your V-sync at 60 FPS, forcing me to use multiple 3rd party programs to eliminate mouse lag (Everyone except Crysis and Metro 2033)

 

[Hochmeister]

Thou shalt not erect invisible walls within an open world
[glares at Fallout New Vegas]

Thou shalt not use abstract, near identical images to represent units
[glares at Total War Rome 2]

Thou shalt not make thy interface confusing and non-ergonomic
[glares at Paradox and Creative Assembly]

Thou shalt not require actions on three separate menu screens to perform a simple, routine action such as moving ships
[glares and spits at Sword of the Stars 2]

 

[Xaidor]

Thou shalt not lock off the fun parts/upgrades until very late in the STORY mode.
( Im looking at you Ubisoft. Bringing so much open-world and not allowing me to use the shiny rope-dart until almost at the end of your story? Bah.)
Not only Ac4 and other AC"s do this, Far Cry 3 did this as well with its locked upgrade trees, causing me to have about 10 skillpoints I couldn't spend until I did a meaningless mission with it's less-meaningless cutscene.

Thou shalt use the colours grey and brown to define the entire look of the game.
I guess this is quite obvious. Yet it happens from time to time.