Gaming Concepts You Absolutely Loathe

Dalisclock

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Thaluikhain said:
Palindromemordnilap said:
When the rules that apply to restrict me do not apply to the enemy I'm fighting. Admittedly I'm thinking more in terms of RTS games where enemy factions seem to eternally have all the resources they need to build however much of whatever they want despite me doing my best to wreck their production capabilities. If smashing my economic stuff slows me down, it should be a viable tactic to slow my enemy down as well
And they are always able to somehow find you anywhere on the map you've gone to.
C&C Red Alert had towers that generated a cloud that was designed to hide anything around it from being seen on the map, unless you took out the tower or were within the cloud. Essentially supposed to be a Radar Jammer.

It actually only worked against other humans. Build as many as you liked, the AI could still see everything you had no matter where it was so there was no point of ever building one while playing against the computer.

trunkage said:
I remember in the Witcher 3 where you find out that Ciri survives an incident if you gave her a pep talk. Or you let a DV victim die or go back to the perpetrator. Which are both terrible. Sometimes choices just need to make sense in the game world, and many times they don't live up to expectation
Yeah, the Ciri thing was annoying. Knowing what choices were correct felt very arbitrary and you didn't get a hint if you right it right or not till the very end of a very long game. Let her smash the room or tell her to restrain herself? Apparently you were supposed to let her smash the room, even though you would think the adult response would be not go on a destructive rampage.
 

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Palindromemordnilap said:
Thaluikhain said:
ObsidianJones said:
Dalisclock said:
Afaik, devs often purposefully allow AI opponents to cheat, because said AI is usually pretty bad, and would get curbstomped if put on a level playing field against even mediocre human players.

Basically, if it feels like the AI is playing by different rules, it's probably because they are.
 

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"Featureless" protagonists. By which I mean protagonists where the game is so intent on keeping the player character a blank cipher for the player to project themselves onto that they pretty much cease to be a character. Ever played Fire Emblem (The Blazing Blade)? Think for a minute on the tactician you play as. ...Ok, a minute is way too long, because the character may as well not exist for all that it's so much as referenced. I hate that. If you aren't even going to bother giving the character a presence, don't bother making it a damn character!
 

EvilRoy

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(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.
 

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Dalisclock said:
Well, considering Jack is literally a toddler who was somehow aged up 20 or so years in a single year before the start of the game I can only imagine Jack doesn't talk because "Jack shoot?" "Dada Golf" would be fairly immersion breaking considering the rest of the story.
We hear him talk at the very start of the game. He's certainly reasonably erudite there. And in a world of plasmids, I don't think the game needs to justify it. I mean, even if he couldn't talk, and that's the reason for it, he still has no trouble using a variety of firearms, or hacking, or using plasmids, or...
Asita said:
"Featureless" protagonists. By which I mean protagonists where the game is so intent on keeping the player character a blank cipher for the player to project themselves onto that they pretty much cease to be a character. Ever played Fire Emblem (The Blazing Blade)? Think for a minute on the tactician you play as. ...Ok, a minute is way too long, because the character may as well not exist for all that it's so much as referenced. I hate that. If you aren't even going to bother giving the character a presence, don't bother making it a damn character!
I will admit I drafted a personality onto Mark via FE fanfic, but that doesn't excuse the nature of the character himself (such as it is). Like, not only is he a mute, but Mark doesn't really make any impact on the story itself. There's nothing that happens in Lyn or Eliwood's campaigns that couldn't happen with minimal changes if Mark wasn't present in the game.
 

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Chimpzy said:
Palindromemordnilap said:
Thaluikhain said:
ObsidianJones said:
Dalisclock said:
Afaik, devs often purposefully allow AI opponents to cheat, because said AI is usually pretty bad, and would get curbstomped if put on a level playing field against even mediocre human players.

Basically, if it feels like the AI is playing by different rules, it's probably because they are.
Oh, I get that. It's just a number of games do a bad job of hiding that there's cheating going on under the hood. When the AI blatantly doesn't play by the same rules you do, it breaks immersion somewhat. Esepecially in games where an economy is in place, where you can downright cripple their supply lines/completely blockade them and they still somehow have hidden resources to pump out more units(which is sometimes due to the AI getting free money).

I'm a big Dark Souls fan, but when "Tough but Fair" comes up, I always counter "Well, except when floors that were previously stable collapse under you for no particular reason, Enemy weapons can phase through objects that your weapons will bounce off of, clearly messed up hitboxes(The Pursurer is a major offender here) and nobody else has to worry about stamina".

Hawki said:
Dalisclock said:
Well, considering Jack is literally a toddler who was somehow aged up 20 or so years in a single year before the start of the game I can only imagine Jack doesn't talk because "Jack shoot?" "Dada Golf" would be fairly immersion breaking considering the rest of the story.
We hear him talk at the very start of the game. He's certainly reasonably erudite there. And in a world of plasmids, I don't think the game needs to justify it. I mean, even if he couldn't talk, and that's the reason for it, he still has no trouble using a variety of firearms, or hacking, or using plasmids, or...
I know it's wierd that that should bother me, but the sticking point is again, Jack is somehow a functional adult depite literally being a year old. And this was done for the sake of a really stupid twist to explain why Jack can use the vita chambers.

It would make a lot more sense if Jack were a normal human turned into a sleeper agent via hypnosis or some crap, instead you have to buy the "We managed to grow a baby to an adult in less then a year, avoid any serious health or development issues, and manage to make him indistinguishable from a normal human who had 20+ years of life experience to shape his character.

Forget the city under the ocean. That would be a world changing event right there. That's up with The Patriots managing to Cure Cancer with a hypo and bring World Peace at the Press of a button in MGS4.

They don't explain how the ADAM works in Bioshock other then "Magical Sea Slugs". Hell, or how the fuck you'd even build a city that far down with 1940's tech. Why come up with some a bizarre and convoluted explanation for why Jack is the only one who can use the vita chambers? System Shock 1/2 just went "Shodan turned them off. You turned them back on. Go with it". Bioshock imported them and tried to explain them in a way that made no sense just because Bioshock was essentially a sequel to system shock, just like Bioshock Infinite imported the Vigors/Plasmids for the same reason(and the reason for the vigors don't make any sense either).

EvilRoy said:
(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. Melee weapons with few or no moving parts shouldn't degrade to any notable degree unless you're using a sword to chop down a tree(which would dull the blade like crazy) and even guns, which do have moving parts, shouldn't degrade in the short term unless you're never cleaning it or firing it so much that the barrel is warping from overheating(which is why machine guns have swappable barrels exactly for this reason). Certain guns are known for being less reliable(There was a french machine gun from WW1 which allegedly never fired an entire magazine without jamming, that's how unreliable it was) but that shouldn't apply to every gun. I think the early fallout games would possibly have guns misfire or even explode if your weapons skill were low enough.

The only game I can think of that actually justified it well was Balders Gate, where the Iron coming out of the local mines was flawed(read: Sabotaged) and thus anything made with it(weapons, but also tools) would break far too easily. It was a notable plot point in the game though.

Dark Souls 2 was also really annoying about this(where weapons seem to fucking melt, that's how fragile they are) so much that getting to the next bonfire can be a challenge before they break, especially in early game. Presumably it's justified by "End of the World" but none of the other games have weapons degrade with such vigor despite the same setting. Hell, in Dark Souls 1 the degradation is barely noticable. Buy the repair kit(which is cheap) and use it once in a blue moon when the durablity starts getting fairly low.

The UberWeapon example might make sense, but it only works if the weapon degradation is limited to that OP weapon, but it never is. Instead, pretty much every weapon will degrade way too quickly no matter what kind it is. You could either say "This weapon is really old and can only withstand a few more uses before it breaks forever" or just make it a late game addition/locked behind a bonus level/boss. An alternative(often done) would be have the really good stuff powered/fueled by a scant or extremely valuable resource. The original XCOM, for example, had plasma weapons as the top tier weapons, but it required an alien element you couldn't produce to make the weapons. You needed to capture that element from UFO crashes to get more of it(granted, that's what you were doing anyway but it gives you more incentive to minimize damage to the UFOs during the battles).
 

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Being stunned in action games (Bayonetta, God Hand, Killer Is Dead, etc.) where you have to wiggle the analog sticks rapidly back and forth. It's a problem on two fronts, as one: cheap difficulty, and two: controllers are expensive. I rather not have to spend 60 bones on a controller, because I wore out my analog stick, because the game required it.
 

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CoCage said:
Being stunned in action games (Bayonetta, God Hand, Killer Is Dead, etc.) where you have to wiggle the analog sticks rapidly back in forth. It's a problem on two fronts, as one: cheap difficulty, and two: controllers are expensive. I rather not have to spend 60 bones on a controller, because I wore out my analong stick, because the game required it.
And this is why the original Mario Party hasn't been ported to anything.
 

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Having to hold down buttons for several seconds to do the thing you wanted to do. It's a button that can register an action in a micro-second but you are forcing people to wait. It's just needless psychological torture. Thank's Ubisoft.

Menus that require you to navigate with a cursor even though you're on a console. Ubisoft why you such dicks?
 

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ObsidianJones said:
As many, I play games for stress relief and enjoyment. It's nice to know that you can put your money down and get an agreeable time from it. But there's a few concepts that bother me to the point that change my feelings for a game almost instantly. And they normally all have to do with Scaling.

1.) NPC Auto Leveling: To me, this is one of the single most dumbest design that has ever come out the gaming industry. There is nothing that tells me my time grinding was useless more than NPC Auto-leveling. Why did I spend hours grinding to get enough points to get the Super Nova ability when a Thief in rags that I had difficulty dispatching with my rusty sword doesn't die outright to it?
100 percent. Auto leveling is retarded. It hurt Oblivion and Skyrim big time. Now, if NPCs actually had to get into fights to level up (like the player), that'd be different.

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

Anyway, another one for me is weapon and/or armour degradation. It's retarded and doesn't belong in games. In the Witcher 3, it's retarded, and I was happy to mod it out. Even in Breath of the Wild, it's unwelcome. And before someone states something like, "Oh, well, you could just go and obtain the best weapons in the game immediately and be overpowered." No, there is an easy workaround for that, which only takes one minute of brainstorming to think up.
 

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Dalisclock said:
EvilRoy said:
(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. Melee weapons with few or no moving parts shouldn't degrade to any notable degree unless you're using a sword to chop down a tree(which would dull the blade like crazy) and even guns, which do have moving parts, shouldn't degrade in the short term unless you're never cleaning it or firing it so much that the barrel is warping from overheating(which is why machine guns have swappable barrels exactly for this reason). Certain guns are known for being less reliable(There was a french machine gun from WW1 which allegedly never fired an entire magazine without jamming, that's how unreliable it was) but that shouldn't apply to every gun. I think the early fallout games would possibly have guns misfire or even explode if your weapons skill were low enough.
The Chauchat is a bit of an outlier, the French ones were mostly alright. It was the American ones with the quick-and-ugly rechambering to .30-06 that got a really bad reputation.

But more to the point: the worst weapon degradation systems are the ones where even the most basic maintenance would totally prevent issues, and characters should by any reasonable standard know how to keep their gear in good shape. Or even worse, when repairs all require consumables. Fallout and Dying Light being two of the worst offenders there. You don't need to break down an identical weapon to fix a gun like New Vegas (take the Service Rifle as an example, an AR doesn't need even small parts replaced until you've got several thousand rounds through it, barrels/bolts/receivers last for 10k+), and it's a pretty shit machete that requires a bunch of metal bracing riveted to the side after 50 hits on random zombies. Basic PMCS, people. Take ten minutes to run a whetstone over your axe when you make camp, or clean and oil your Battle Rifle after you clear Dead Wind Cavern!

Which brings me to the other thing I hate: when devs apply adventure game logic to any kind of locked door or container. Everyone's seen the memes about it in Bethesda games with Master-locked doors that a kid could knock open, but it really sends me up the wall in "realistic" survival-type games. The Long Dark particularly stands out with the "need prybar to open lockers, car trunks and locked doors" thing. I've got a hatchet, a five-pound hammer and a hacksaw, I should be going through the fucking walls, not looking for yet another tool.
 

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Mad World said:
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.
 

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Ravinoff said:
Which brings me to the other thing I hate: when devs apply adventure game logic to any kind of locked door or container. Everyone's seen the memes about it in Bethesda games with Master-locked doors that a kid could knock open, but it really sends me up the wall in "realistic" survival-type games. The Long Dark particularly stands out with the "need prybar to open lockers, car trunks and locked doors" thing. I've got a hatchet, a five-pound hammer and a hacksaw, I should be going through the fucking walls, not looking for yet another tool.
Isn't that Resident Evil Type games in a nutshell? Seriously, dude, all I wanted was to open the door. Not spend 20 minutes figuring out puzzles.

It's a Wonder the Racoon City PD ever got any crime solving done considering how nuts their police station was designed.
 
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Dalisclock said:
Ravinoff said:
Which brings me to the other thing I hate: when devs apply adventure game logic to any kind of locked door or container. Everyone's seen the memes about it in Bethesda games with Master-locked doors that a kid could knock open, but it really sends me up the wall in "realistic" survival-type games. The Long Dark particularly stands out with the "need prybar to open lockers, car trunks and locked doors" thing. I've got a hatchet, a five-pound hammer and a hacksaw, I should be going through the fucking walls, not looking for yet another tool.
Isn't that Resident Evil Type games in a nutshell? Seriously, dude, all I wanted was to open the door. Not spend 20 minutes figuring out puzzles.

It's a Wonder the Racoon City PD ever got any crime solving done considering how nuts their police station was designed.
God, it feels like all I'm doing is complaining about RE2 in this thread.

But this reminded me of two things.

First off, I hate logical inconsistencies in a game. Leon already got the medallions to open up the secret passage way. What happens... are.... is there like tubes that sucks the medallions back to their statues? Does that for some reason reset the password for some reason therefore Leon-A's codes for some reason don't work on Claire-B?

And why couldn't I see Claire's machine-gun? Why the HELL was there a speed-loader in Leon's desk when no one in the department uses revolvers? And why is it just so happened to be a 5 round speed-loader when a six shot revolver is by far more popular?!

The second thing is how excited I was when I remembered Lickers responded to sound. I remember thinking I was going to lure Mr. X (who would like to give it to you) into the hallway and this is going to be amazing. It doesn't matter if I die to it, I'm going to see this fight.

... nothing. They just ignore each other and fight me. I hate that. I hate when things that have no reason to ally together forget each other and attack you only. That really takes me out of the game. Some of my best times in video games was when I was younger and getting demons to fight each other in Doom 2.

Doom 2 can manage to do that, but you can't Resident Evil 2 remake? Really?
 

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Thaluikhain said:
Mad World said:
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. 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?
 

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ObsidianJones said:
Dalisclock said:
Ravinoff said:
The second thing is how excited I was when I remembered Lickers responded to sound. I remember thinking I was going to lure Mr. X (who would like to give it to you) into the hallway and this is going to be amazing. It doesn't matter if I die to it, I'm going to see this fight.

... nothing. They just ignore each other and fight me. I hate that. I hate when things that have no reason to ally together forget each other and attack you only. That really takes me out of the game. Some of my best times in video games was when I was younger and getting demons to fight each other in Doom 2.

Doom 2 can manage to do that, but you can't Resident Evil 2 remake? Really?
You know somethings wrong when the non-canon Chinese Manwha and some Western comics of RE2&3 does this concept better than the games. I did not see it as big deal, but I understand the frustration. At least Mr.X pushes/punches zombies in his way.
 

Zeraki

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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.
 

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Zeraki said:
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.
 

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CoCage said:
Zeraki said:
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.
Mm, I was very glad with how they did it in 4 where you didn't need to ace the mission to get a new ability but instead had to take on the mission in a disadvantageous climate that made the level and boss more difficult.