Gaming Concepts You Absolutely Loathe

[Zeraki]

Grading systems in action games.

One of the things that killed the Mega Man X series for me (among other things) from X5 onward was the grading system after each level. I just want to enjoy the game, not feel like I'm being judged by it thank you very much.

If you think that's bad, wait until you play the Mega Man Zero games. They're even worse and stricter.

Action games that do grading the best are usually the ones with melee combat. Not all the time though.

Oh I've played the Zero games and the ranking system killed it for me.

X1-4 are some of my favorite "wind down" games. Games I don't need to put much effort into and just pretend the world doesn't exist for a while.

Adding a ranking system adds a level of stress and a need to play in a specific way, which isn't fun to me.

I want to love the Zero games too, which makes it more frustrating.

 

[twistedmic]

Open world games.

Not to say that open world games can't be done right, but im my experience, developers just cant seem to get it right.

These games are sold on their size, but there often isn't anything to justify it.

I have similar feelings about open world games and their size. All to often those huge open world games are sparsely populated and I can go minutes at a stretch without running into anything alive (Fallout 4, RDR2 etc.). I've told friends I's much rather have ten square blacks of L.A. or New York than ten or a hundred square miles of Alaska.

 

[Squilookle]

This is all taken from the 'why don't more games have this?' thread. Just imagine all these things, but specifically when a game doesn't do them:​

In Unreal Tournament, if you're crouching, you can't fall off a ledge. You physically just can't do it. It's so stupidly simple it's brilliant, and all 1st person games should have it.

In Goldeneye, higher difficulty adds more objectives to a level. In Perfect Dark it sometimes even changes start points and opens other areas you have to go through instead of the ones you know. It's hard to describe how much benefit this brings to replayability. All games set in enclosed pre-planned levels should have this.

Star Wars Battlefront II released in 2005 with a full singleplayer campaign, instant action against a full serverload of bots on every single level, and a 'choose your own path' galactic conquest mode that could be played solo, with, or against other people. All Star Wars Battlefront games should have this.

(And any Battlefield-like game, to be honest).

In fact, all shooters ever made should have instant action mode against decent AI bot opposition. Even singleplayer only shooters. This should be decreed by law.

Conker's Bad Fur Day allows you to skip cutscenes after you have viewed them once. More importantly, the start button will pause the cutscene just like it pauses any other part of the game. This system of cutscene management has never been topped and should become standard in all games with cutscenes.

Some games with long scrolling menus (I'm citing Perfect Dark again here but there are loads others) jump straight back to the top item if you press down when at the bottom. Again this is incredibly simple, but some games even today don't always get it right. Standardise it now.

In Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, when you first load it up, 'Start New game' is at the top of the menu screen, and highlighted by default. Once you have a save, 'Continue game' appears on the menu, but it is underneath Start New, with the latter still highlighted first. This is bad. All games with a front-end menu that includes a save-sensitive 'continue/load game' option should have it appear right at the top, and highlighted ready to go. We select 'continue' hundreds of times during a playthrough. We only select 'new' once. Also in-game pause screens should have the 'retry' option extremely close to the initial highlighted option. You want to absolutely minimise frustration time for players when they mess up in game. having to memorise a long winded menu navigation to restart is poor game design.

 

[SweetShark]

Slide Puzzles...
Right now I am playing Toonstruck on GOG.
Great GREAT adventure and awesome animation.
But suddenly the game wanted to do a slide puzzle...fuck.
Thankfully by little luck and logic I completed it.
But yeah, If I stuck on them I give up the games entirely.

 

[Dalisclock]

Slide Puzzles...
Right now I am playing Toonstruck on GOG.
Great GREAT adventure and awesome animation.
But suddenly the game wanted to do a slide puzzle...fuck.
Thankfully by little luck and logic I completed it.
But yeah, If I stuck on them I give up the games entirely.

Reminds me of Broken Sword 3.

I really like the game, but oh my god did someone on the dev team have a hard on for Block puzzles because you do them over and over again. On the bright side, Broken Sword 4 scaled back on them a lot but sadly the rest of the game also wasn't up to snuff either.

 

[Casual Shinji]

(Bad) weapon degradation

Sometimes weapon degradation makes sense and can be a good balancing mechanic. Yes, the crazy sword you just got is super rad but, no, we can't let you keep it all game because it would screw the balance. Save it to wreck a boss or easymode an encounter, but that's all.

Makes sense. What doesn't make sense are clubs, pipe guns, etc. Breaking up very easily. Because they suck. It doesn't hurt anything to let me keep the crappiest weapons forever (so at least I have something) or if you are going to break them, do not tell me that it requires a piece of wood to fix a club. Thats stupid, and not how clubs work.

Yathzee had a good take on this.

"Also, you have one second to name any game in which weapon degradation has been a good idea. [beat] Time's up! That's what I thought! There's something very wrong about a katana that shatters after five or six hits, one that ostensibly isn't made out of glass or chocolate."

It's hard for me to think of a game where Weapon Degradation was done well, because it's almost always obnoxiously implemented.

The Last of Us did it well. They achieved this by not making the melee weapons feel essential to the combat; you also have your guns and your fists, a melee weapon simply hits harder and allows you to beat clickers to death. Secondly, it clearly indicates how many hits the weapon has, making it feel akin to a magazine clip. And lastly, you barely ever have time to get even remotely attached to your melee weapon since they break after taking down one or two enemies, depending on whether it's a plank of wood or a steel pipe. The amount of hits you get from one also work well with the amount of hits you need to take down an enemy. A plank of wood as the lowest tier has four pips, and an enemy generally goes down in four hits or less.

In a nutshell it doesn't have the uncertainty that typically comes with weapon degradation in games.

 

[ScorpionPrince]

I don't hate it exactly, and don't mind it existing in other games, but I cannot get on board with procedural generation. It instantly turns me off a game, ensures I'll never play it. I want a game to be specifically designed the way I play it.

Check out Dead Cells. It has procedural generation, but there are elements that are always the same, and it's really well done.

 

[happyninja42]

It's hard for me to think of a game where Weapon Degradation was done well, because it's almost always obnoxiously implemented.

The one game that I thought did Weapon Degradation well was Dying Light. Partly because it made sense in-game why the weapons would break down, as they were mostly cobbled together weapons the player made with random junk lying around. Tying a battery with metal prongs to a pipe so it shocks enemies you hit isn't the most sturdy of constructions, so it made a bit more sense to me.

It falls apart when you start finding actual weapons, like machetes (something designed to be really durable and chop down tough obstructions) and swords and the like, but they usually lasted for a long time, so it was hardly a problem in my opinion. Plus, being able to repair them drastically increased their lifespan, and with a certain perk you had a really good chance of not consuming one of it's repair charges when you repaired it.

It wasn't too big of an issue for me, since you find so many weapons in that game, that you are swimming in them, so replacing broken weapons (which was rare) wasn't really a problem, you had plenty to choose from.

Having typed that, I also thought the Hardcore mode of New Vegas had a fun durability system, at least if you bought that one perk that let you repair weapons with other similar weapons. That felt really good and fun to me. The idea of gutting some weapon that just has a similar design, and using it to keep my really sweet sniper rifle working was always enjoyable.

Plus it was a sick way to make a ton of caps in that game. When you found really expensive rifles, like the automatic ones, and could repair them with crap weapons that were a dime a dozen. Boost their durability up to max, which exponentially increased their sell value, and then go drop them off at a vendor. Swimming in money.

 

[laggyteabag]

(Bad) weapon degradation

Sometimes weapon degradation makes sense and can be a good balancing mechanic. Yes, the crazy sword you just got is super rad but, no, we can't let you keep it all game because it would screw the balance. Save it to wreck a boss or easymode an encounter, but that's all.

Makes sense. What doesn't make sense are clubs, pipe guns, etc. Breaking up very easily. Because they suck. It doesn't hurt anything to let me keep the crappiest weapons forever (so at least I have something) or if you are going to break them, do not tell me that it requires a piece of wood to fix a club. Thats stupid, and not how clubs work.

God, I hate weapon degredation.

I do have to disagree with you, though.

The problem with powerful items being single-use or limited-use, is that I end up just avoiding using them. In a lot of games, I end up with an inventory full of un-used consumables, or limited-use items, because my mentality will always be "I'll need it for a tougher fight later on", and then I never end up using it.

That being said, I don't actually mind shitty scrap weapons breaking down or being generally unreliable, but I suppose it really depends on the game as to when it is appropriate. For example, in The Last of Us, where you are constantly scavenging for supplies and ammo, you can use makeshift melee weapons like pipes or wood planks, which obviously aren't made to cave skulls in, so it makes sense that they will break eventually - but they are good for when you are desperate.

What doesn't make sense, though, is strong, purpose built items, like machetes or fire axes, breaking into pieces after 3-5 hits.

I suppose it all comes down to context. If it is going to break into pieces, make it look like shit. Have it be an improvised club, or stick it together with duct tape. Just don't give me this shiny forged sword, and have it smash into bits after its first fight.

 

[Drathnoxis]

We Cannot Go On Without You

The RPG concept where if the party leader gets KO'd, you lose instantly.

Persona 3 was great because the enemies also had one hit KO moves. So you'd be 9 floors into a section doing perfectly well and suddenly something would land an unavoidable instakill on the MC and you get to repeat the last half hour of samey repetitive mazes again.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Not sure if it's as much a gaming concept instead of a concept of creation, but I do loathe it very much, so half rounded up to the nearest whole means it probably counts!
Some recent information on Destiny from the horse's mouth provided an insight on their main antagonist, "the darrrrrkness" and why it's so bloody dull, unoriginal and half-baked... essentially because they didn't have an idea on what they wanted the overarching antagonist force to be until like the most recent DLC for the sequel, so went with that dumbass placeholder and booted the game out regardless. Now it's mainly the implication of motive that i hate, as they couldn't have had a story in mind that they wanted to tell at all...no, they wanted a product to sell and to patch in the story later when convenient. No wonder the campaigns were so narratively crap! I openly admit to being legitimately intrigued by the game's plot when it was first marketed, but I was a foolish fool being fooled by people who were content with shitting out hack ideas with only the goal of "long-term user engaaaagement." No respect for their own story, why should I bother too then? Am not exaggerating to say any hint of interest in their future work instantly evaporated upon learning such knowledges. Customers still lapped it up though. That's how dire the expectations of videogame narrative are amongst most consumers!

 

[Kyrian007]

For example, In Skyrim, I remember leveling to a certain point, and then the enemies are suddenly significantly stronger than me. It's stupid.

Especially when you can level up with your enchanting or blacksmithing. I like using that spell to make iron ore into gold ore (Takes ages) and then making gold rings or necklaces and selling them, but you level up quickly and leveling up is bad that way.

So you gamed the system and got bit. Shouldn't that be a lesson?

I actually only half believe this statement. I get the necessity to provide rules to a game environment but also get annoyed at other rules that restrict me.

I believe in that fully; it was a feature, not a flaw. They knew there was little they could do to prevent players from finding exploits to quickly level skills. Its great because it specifically isn't a restriction. You certainly can use exploits to get your Alchemy up to 100 quickly, there is nothing stopping you from doing that. The standard Drugar in the next dungeon will pound you into mulch, but it IS mulch that used to be AWESOME at Alchemy. It was a system that just strongly suggested a player not "cheat" and take a slower and better roleplayed balanced approach.

I found it funniest when people would go to bleak falls and turbo level their Block skill early on. It led to a game where the leveled up enemies still couldn't kill you through your cranked up block skill, but you couldn't do enough damage to them with your comparatively underleveled offensive skills. "Cheating" made the combat unbearably dull and tedious... very funny to those of us who realized the mistake that player made.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I believe in that fully; it was a feature, not a flaw. They knew there was little they could do to prevent players from finding exploits to quickly level skills. Its great because it specifically isn't a restriction. You certainly can use exploits to get your Alchemy up to 100 quickly, there is nothing stopping you from doing that. The standard Drugar in the next dungeon will pound you into mulch, but it IS mulch that used to be AWESOME at Alchemy. It was a system that just strongly suggested a player not "cheat" and take a slower and better roleplayed balanced approach.

Well, I've got nothing against people finding exploits if they want (I use a lot of third party mods), but that wasn't what I was doing. The first town you go to has a blacksmith that encourages you to take up blacksmithing. But if that seems like fun and you do it too much, you've mucked up your character.

Likewise, if you want to go enchanting, if you want to find one of every type of enchantment so you can learn how to do them all yourself (gotta catch them all) you get penalised for it because you're not playing the game properly. Albeit to a much lesser extent because the opportunities for doing that is less than for smithing.

Surely if the game gives you the option of doing those things, if they encourage them as fun things yo do, players aren't doing it wrong if they do that?

 

[Silent Protagonist]

I believe in that fully; it was a feature, not a flaw. They knew there was little they could do to prevent players from finding exploits to quickly level skills. Its great because it specifically isn't a restriction. You certainly can use exploits to get your Alchemy up to 100 quickly, there is nothing stopping you from doing that. The standard Drugar in the next dungeon will pound you into mulch, but it IS mulch that used to be AWESOME at Alchemy. It was a system that just strongly suggested a player not "cheat" and take a slower and better roleplayed balanced approach.

Well, I've got nothing against people finding exploits if they want (I use a lot of third party mods), but that wasn't what I was doing. The first town you go to has a blacksmith that encourages you to take up blacksmithing. But if that seems like fun and you do it too much, you've mucked up your character.

Likewise, if you want to go enchanting, if you want to find one of every type of enchantment so you can learn how to do them all yourself (gotta catch them all) you get penalised for it because you're not playing the game properly. Albeit to a much lesser extent because the opportunities for doing that is less than for smithing.

Surely if the game gives you the option of doing those things, if they encourage them as fun things yo do, players aren't doing it wrong if they do that?

Yes the problem was that enemies scaled against your level but many of the skills that increase your level don't necessarily increase your combat abilities proportionately. So if you spend time having fun in towns and leveling your non-combat abilities, or if you mix up your fighting style from time to time leading to leveling redundant skills, the enemies become much stronger while your power level remains about the same. It gets to the point, especially at later levels, that players are forced to use exploits such as alchemy/enchanting/blacksmithing loops to create ludicrously powerful equipment just to keep up. Your character should not feel weaker at level 40 than it did at level 1

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

So you gamed the system and got bit. Shouldn't that be a lesson?

I actually only half believe this statement. I get the necessity to provide rules to a game environment but also get annoyed at other rules that restrict me. Witcher 3 and letting you only gain XP via main missions just frustrated the already terrible exploration experience. "Don't worry about doing side quests. They aren't worth doing." Or New Vegas horseshoe to New Vegas, literally deleting your ability to do much exploration, all for the sake of narrative.

Divinity OS2 making killing everyone almost mandatory to make sure that fights were beatable later on. It's forcing you to become a mass murder or the game is way more difficult. Or the fact that each zone had civilians whose level matched yours. Because, it so makes sense that each zone should have wildly differently skilled civilians. IRL if the last zone decided to attack the first zone, the first zone would no longer exist. Why would the first zone ever exist?

I believe in that fully; it was a feature, not a flaw. They knew there was little they could do to prevent players from finding exploits to quickly level skills. Its great because it specifically isn't a restriction. You certainly can use exploits to get your Alchemy up to 100 quickly, there is nothing stopping you from doing that. The standard Drugar in the next dungeon will pound you into mulch, but it IS mulch that used to be AWESOME at Alchemy. It was a system that just strongly suggested a player not "cheat" and take a slower and better roleplayed balanced approach.

I found it funniest when people would go to bleak falls and turbo level their Block skill early on. It led to a game where the leveled up enemies still couldn't kill you through your cranked up block skill, but you couldn't do enough damage to them with your comparatively underleveled offensive skills. "Cheating" made the combat unbearably dull and tedious... very funny to those of us who realized the mistake that player made.

As Thaluikhain already said, there's a difference between an exploit and playing a game. An exploit is that you found that a certain item in your inventory is bugged and totally messes up XP rewards. Level one monsters will give you end game XP (1 xp per kill vs 100,000 xp per kill). You find this item four hours into the game where you're leveled to a point that Level One Monsters die if you sneeze around them. So you stay there and farm. That's an exploit. That's not how the game was made.

Given the multiple iterations of Skyrim, getting XP for blacksmithing and enchanting isn't a bug. If it was, it would have been patched out of the game several iterations ago.

Nor is it something easy to do in the early game. You have to find these caves. You need to kill what's in there. You need to mine. You need to refine and get other materials such as hunting animals for leather. You need to render all those items, and then build.

That's work. That's Honest to Sweet Zombie Jesus Work. You have to go to mine after mine. You have to make sure you don't do anything to interrupt the respawn timer. You can only carry so much or you can't fast travel. And you can't make anyone else do it for you.

How can this ever be considered an exploit? How can this even be considered quick?

And this goes to my actual original point. Do not put in a leveling system if you plan to make it useless to 'always give a challenge'. It's just a tacked on, needless mechanic that doesn't mean anything if you never actually get stronger.

 

[happyninja42]

Not sure if this would be a "mechanic", though it might qualify under Forced Cutscenes or something, but I remember playing that first Tomb Raider reboot game, and being really annoyed with one point in the game and what happened.

Basically you see a parachute when at the safe point with friends, and you go running off to try and save the person (presumably a pilot), before the badguys get to him. So you run off, and I'm heading that way like a good little hero. I get to the spot, which is up one level from where I was at the time, up a simple ramp. I climb up the ramp, and I see a badguy with a shield, with his back to me, advancing on the pilot, who is injured. So I get ready to blast him to save the guy, and the game instead, takes away control, and shows me a cutscene of Lara just...standing there...WATCHING the badguy approach the pilot. And just...watches him gun down the injured man. And I'm yelling at my monitor "SHOOT HIM!! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!?"

So yeah, that was an annoying thing that I dislike in games.

 

[BrawlMan]

Not sure if this would be a "mechanic", though it might qualify under Forced Cutscenes or something, but I remember playing that first Tomb Raider reboot game, and being really annoyed with one point in the game and what happened.

Basically you see a parachute when at the safe point with friends, and you go running off to try and save the person (presumably a pilot), before the badguys get to him. So you run off, and I'm heading that way like a good little hero. I get to the spot, which is up one level from where I was at the time, up a simple ramp. I climb up the ramp, and I see a badguy with a shield, with his back to me, advancing on the pilot, who is injured. So I get ready to blast him to save the guy, and the game instead, takes away control, and shows me a cutscene of Lara just...standing there...WATCHING the badguy approach the pilot. And just...watches him gun down the injured man. And I'm yelling at my monitor "SHOOT HIM!! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!?"

So yeah, that was an annoying thing that I dislike in games.

Gameplay and story segregation. Always annoying; especially in survival horror games.

 

[Dalisclock]

Not sure if this would be a "mechanic", though it might qualify under Forced Cutscenes or something, but I remember playing that first Tomb Raider reboot game, and being really annoyed with one point in the game and what happened.

Basically you see a parachute when at the safe point with friends, and you go running off to try and save the person (presumably a pilot), before the badguys get to him. So you run off, and I'm heading that way like a good little hero. I get to the spot, which is up one level from where I was at the time, up a simple ramp. I climb up the ramp, and I see a badguy with a shield, with his back to me, advancing on the pilot, who is injured. So I get ready to blast him to save the guy, and the game instead, takes away control, and shows me a cutscene of Lara just...standing there...WATCHING the badguy approach the pilot. And just...watches him gun down the injured man. And I'm yelling at my monitor "SHOOT HIM!! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!?"

So yeah, that was an annoying thing that I dislike in games.

Gameplay and Story Segregation. Oh god did the 2013 Tomb Raider have issues with this. There's that, the issue with the "Oh, Sorry Mr. Deer I had to kill you to survive" and then kill like 20,000 bad guys and not feeling a thing about it, or Lara being surprisingly good at murder off the bat considering she's supposed to be a college student on a research trip.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Not sure if this would be a "mechanic", though it might qualify under Forced Cutscenes or something, but I remember playing that first Tomb Raider reboot game, and being really annoyed with one point in the game and what happened.

Basically you see a parachute when at the safe point with friends, and you go running off to try and save the person (presumably a pilot), before the badguys get to him. So you run off, and I'm heading that way like a good little hero. I get to the spot, which is up one level from where I was at the time, up a simple ramp. I climb up the ramp, and I see a badguy with a shield, with his back to me, advancing on the pilot, who is injured. So I get ready to blast him to save the guy, and the game instead, takes away control, and shows me a cutscene of Lara just...standing there...WATCHING the badguy approach the pilot. And just...watches him gun down the injured man. And I'm yelling at my monitor "SHOOT HIM!! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!?"

So yeah, that was an annoying thing that I dislike in games.

Gameplay and Story Segregation. Oh god did the 2013 Tomb Raider have issues with this. There's that, the issue with the "Oh, Sorry Mr. Deer I had to kill you to survive" and then kill like 20,000 bad guys and not feeling a thing about it, or Lara being surprisingly good at murder off the bat considering she's supposed to be a college student on a research trip.

Not to mention when Lara is complaining about killing people in this game I'm playing because it's about killing people. After the wolf cave, when you reach the next group of cultists, I was thinking about how cool it'd be to shoot that guy in the head with an arrow before he sees me, when Lara yells out to them that they don't have to fight. Get with the program.

OTOH, that does mean that that bit where she's part of a long gunfight just before everything catches fire and she starts yelling out that she's going to kill people is satisfying, but mostly in a "it's so good when she stops whining" sort of way.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Not sure if this would be a "mechanic", though it might qualify under Forced Cutscenes or something, but I remember playing that first Tomb Raider reboot game, and being really annoyed with one point in the game and what happened.

Basically you see a parachute when at the safe point with friends, and you go running off to try and save the person (presumably a pilot), before the badguys get to him. So you run off, and I'm heading that way like a good little hero. I get to the spot, which is up one level from where I was at the time, up a simple ramp. I climb up the ramp, and I see a badguy with a shield, with his back to me, advancing on the pilot, who is injured. So I get ready to blast him to save the guy, and the game instead, takes away control, and shows me a cutscene of Lara just...standing there...WATCHING the badguy approach the pilot. And just...watches him gun down the injured man. And I'm yelling at my monitor "SHOOT HIM!! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!?"

So yeah, that was an annoying thing that I dislike in games.

Gameplay and Story Segregation. Oh god did the 2013 Tomb Raider have issues with this. There's that, the issue with the "Oh, Sorry Mr. Deer I had to kill you to survive" and then kill like 20,000 bad guys and not feeling a thing about it, or Lara being surprisingly good at murder off the bat considering she's supposed to be a college student on a research trip.

Actually, I'm ok with that part.

In real life, the deer did nothing to me. It could easily become a friend. But my need for substance and the easy bounty of a deer will keep me alive.

The bad guys are choosing to harm me and/or kill me for money. Why should I have pity or remorse?