Poll: Game features you don't care for

[happyninja42]

Completionist game padding. What I call Easter Egg Hunting in game. I can't stand games that forcibly insert random stuff for you to go and collect, for no real reason other than to collect them and get an achievement. The flags in Assassin's Creed 1 for example. Totally pointless, and annoying. I get that the game devs want you to explore the fun cool world they spent months/years creating, but really why should I stick my nose into EVERY freaking corner and house and closet in the game, looking for useless trinkets that aren't there for any purpose? Busywork annoys me to no end in video games.

For me the inFamous games did this thing in the best manner. The shards you were collecting had an in-game reason for being scattered everywhere, you had an in-game method to help you find them (the pulse radar thingy to locate nearby ones), and there was a practical reason for doing it. (it increased your power pool for using your abilities). THAT kind of Easter Egg Hunting is tolerable to me, when it makes sense to the story of the game, and isn't some kind of Metagaming , pokemon-esque "gotta Achieve em all!!" bullshit.

 

[Gatx]

I don't like DLC weapons or items, especially when they're just automatically added into your inventory upon install. That means that they're usually automatically in your inventory every time you start a new game too. Like it ruins the opening of Borderlands 2 for me because I want to start from the beginning and scavenge new items, but instead I have these glaring yellow guns staring me in the face. They're getting really common nowadays as pre-order bonuses and what not so yeah...

 

[Mister Chippy]

I've got a few:

Multiplayer in singleplayer based games. I'm sorry bioshock 2 and spec-ops, but that money spent on your multiplayer modes should have gone into the campaign. (Heck, spec-ops head guy said he thought the multiplayer mode was a waste himself.)

Singleplayer in multiplayer games. I'm looking at you brawl, battlefield, and COD. I don't know a single person who bought those games for the story mode, and yet for some reason those monstrous, railroaded wastes of money, time, and effort still exist instead of all the additional maps and stages that the companies could have made. (I understand COD does it because otherwise there is almost no difference between the individual games aside from some of the maps and guns, but still...)

New Game + also annoys me because its just a cheap way of getting out of including extra endgame content. "Beat our game? Well why not play it again, only we'll actually let you play on hard mode this time! Whaddaya mean you wanted to play on hard mode from the beginning?" Its worse when the progression in games is focused around the difficulty of finding good loot (BL2, FF:CC) to begin with that starting out with all your loot kinda ruins the flow of the game. Keeping your loot and levels is really the only reason to even include NG+ in the first place, because otherwise why don't you just have an extra difficulty available from the start for people who don't want to have to play your game twice?

Realism. Because how realistic we can make games is only going to get better, and when it does the games of yesterday that focused on realism will just be plain worse than current games. I like games I buy to have lasting appeal, and if in a few years your hyper-realistic physics and graphics are gonna be bad compared to the current offering why should I bother buying it?

 

[Diddy_Mao]

Multiplayer is fine, I can take it or leave it and in some games it can be a fun option (Borderlands 2)

But the key word is option Don't add "Multiplayer Only" missions and areas to the core campaign. That's just teasing players who don't want to play with others or don't have friends with the same game. (Yeah I know most games have a "random player match" feature. I'd rather have a random wolverine shoved down my trousers.)


But Multiplayer has been pretty much every other post in this thread so...here's another pet peeve of mine.

Sniper Scopes without adjustable zoom.

The whole appeal of playing a sniper in an FPS game is the versatility of the tool. If you won't let me zoom in or out to optimal scope then all you've done is give me a firmly defined radius at which I can effectively use my weapon of choice.

 

[Souplex]

The whole appeal of playing a sniper in an FPS game is the versatility of the tool. If you won't let me zoom in or out to optimal scope then all you've done is give me a firmly defined radius at which I can effectively use my weapon of choice.

It's especially bad when you consider it would be easy to implement due to the fact that the triggers on controllers can tell how far you're pressing them.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Dunno if this counts but crosshairs when hipfire-ing bothers me without end in fps's.

 

[josemlopes]

That Red Dead Redemption multiplayer mode sure wasnt fun, right guys? And that Dark Souls, what a failure.

If its done right I really dont see why it isnt a cared feature, I get that multiplayer now is seen as a boogy man that makes budgets go sky high in games that dont need it but when you have a game that does it right it adds replayability, content and lenght.

For me is New Game+, I get the appeal that you get to do the same but with all the shit right from the start, still, its basicly something so simple (that honestly the decision to implement it comes from "would the game work or not", I really dont see it being an expensive thing to implement) and not that game changing that I really dont see it taking over any other option there.

So basicly, if it works with New Game+ it will probably have it, if it doesnt work that well it wont have it but either way you can just start from the start and choose a different skill set to play it diferently

 

[Naeras]

Out-of-game-leveling/upgrade systems in multiplayer titles.

It just doesn't do anything for me. It means it takes longer before I have full access to the content at full power, while players who simply have played the game for longer than me have an advantage because they have played the game for longer, not because they're necessarily better than me.

 

[CabooseVD]

Quick time events didn't make?

I think Quick Time Events aren't advertised that much nowadays. Every action game has them to some degree, seeing as most actions are shoved into contextual-sensitive buttons and the game will prompt you to press them for a short period of time to succeed in whatever you're doing. Take Arkham City. Lightning bolts show up over enemies' heads whenever they're about to strike you, prompting you to press the counter button to deflect them. How is this any different from a Quick Time Event? And yet nobody would criticize Arkham City for its QTEs. They're pain (or just boring) if you base your whole game around them, as in for-every-little-thing, like RE6.

I'm okay with them in Arkham City because they fit in the middle of combat, which bring a change of pace to the flow. I think the one's that everybody hate are the "Interactive Cut Scenes" those are what I remember being on the back of game boxes. But you're right, I don't think anyone has put it on there in a while though.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

I don't really know about features that I don't like, don't know if I've found one.

Game mechanics on the other hand, that is where I get down to dislikes.

Escort missions.
Games that are built around a timer or at least portions of the game are built around it, like:
Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
LoZ: Phantom Hourglass
Dead Rising

I find it just doesn't fit for games that require exploration. If I'm exploring and getting the lay of the land, I want to have all the time in the world.

Achievements really don't see the point.

Bragging rights.

Back in the day if you wanted to prove to your friends that you did something in a game, you would have to play it in front of them to show them.

Back then(and still today), I beat Megaman 2 regularly on the NES, and my friends back then never believed me. Today with other games I can just show an achievement.

Plus, achievements give me extra challenges to do in my games, sometimes they are things I never would have thought of doing.

The one problem I find is they really don't make many games these days that are as challenge as old NES games and the like.

 

[CaptainThom]

Voice Acting. Couldn't care less, and lately many games are overrated just for being voice-acted.
Voice acting is the new "what makes games good" of the masses, as if it wasn't bad enough with "realistic graphics".

Achievements really don't see the point.

Achievements are only an annoyance, but those go with the features I hate, together with QTEs.

QTEs...How could i forget the dreaded QTEs

 

[K12]

I can't think of any game that had both single player and multi-player were one didn't slightly detract from the other. All my favourite multiplayer games are only multiplayer games.

Just out of interest has anybody ever played the Spec-Ops: The Line multiplayer? I deliberately avoided it because I couldn't think of a worse way of completely undermining the plot of the single player.

 

[porous_shield]

A feature I hate is regenerating health and iron sights. These games seem to swarm you with enemies to give your regenerating ass a challenge and it always feels like, at least to me, that I've knocked over a beehive. Added to that is with all these enemies coming at you, you're going to be looking down the sights a lot and I hate having that limited field of view and having to pop the gun back up to my face every couple of seconds. Feels something like the detective vision problem in Arkham Asylum where it was so useful you'd want it on most of the time but then you missed out on all the work gone into the games's aesthetic.

I've also seen games tout their cover based shooting and I think cover based shooters are a huge snorefest. Hiding behind a wall and waiting for the enemies to pop out of cover isn't how I want to spend the limited time I have for gaming.

 

[conmag9]

Multiplayer, hands down. Especially in games that aren't built around them as the primary focus and ESPECIALLY the ones that are clearly tacked on and nobody wants. It doesn't make your game better, it just steals funds away.

 

[Kotaro]

Crafting systems. They sound cool, and some games have done them well, but most of the time they just make sure that I never want to sell anything so I end up carrying around a bajillion random crafting components long after the only things they can be used to make have stopped being useful to me.
Sometimes I can make outdated things with components and sell the crafted items at a slight profit, and that can work well. But the worst use of a crafting system that I can think of off the top of my head? Dust: An Elysian Tail.
Otherwise, it's a spectacular game, but to craft anything, you need both a buttload of components and a blueprint for the item. Almost every component and about 80% of the blueprints are random enemy drops, which means lots of grinding if you need a particular component (or you can spend a ton of money on a couple of it at the shop, and then wait for it to restock so you can buy more of it). Most of the time, what you can craft isn't actually any better than what you already have or can buy. To craft things, you need to trek all the way to the blacksmith (unless you bothered to find the item that lets you contact her from anywhere). And while actually crafting the thing costs far less than just buying the weapon/armor/whatever from the shop, if you try to sell your crafted doohickey, you'll end up breaking even (which actually means you're losing money because you're also down the crafting materials). "So just don't craft anything if it's not explicitly better than what you have!" I hear you say. And you'd be right. Except unused blueprints continue to sit there, mixed in with your real items, just taking up space and cluttering up my inventory. And you can't toss blueprints out, even if they're for an item from the very beginning of the game and you're right before the final boss. This last part is probably just a nitpick, but it seriously bugs me; I like to keep my inventory screens clean, thanks.
My favorite crafting system on the other hand, is in the Etrian Odyssey series, because it's not really a crafting system. Instead, enemies drop random crap that you can sell to the shop, and if you sell enough of the right kinds of items, the shop will add new stock. This actually makes more sense to me than the usual crafting system, because instead of "Bring me this stuff and for a fee, I'll make something out of them," it's "Bring me stuff, and if I can use it to make something cool, I'll sell that to you!"

EDIT: Oh no, wait, Dust's crafting system is tied with the cooking menu in Muramasa: The Demon Blade for worst. In Muramasa, you find a bunch of cooking ingredients, and you can make healing items out of them. But first you have to buy the cookbook to learn the recipe. Why can't I just find the healing items already cooked and ready to use? All that this does is add an unnecessary step to things.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I can't think of any game that had both single player and multi-player were one didn't slightly detract from the other. All my favourite multiplayer games are only multiplayer games.

Don't know if it counts but Half-Life + Counter Strike was an awesome combo of single player and multiplayer.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

multiplayer, stop wrecking my single player games by sticking multiplayer into it, perfect example of this (and the first I can think of) is the way ultima 9 was destroyed by EA diverting resources to Ultima Online but its happened in so many games since, look at mass effect 3, would the ending have been better if the resources wasted on multiplayer were put where they belonged, into the single player story, Fear 3 being co-op added nothing to me sitting by myself on the couch playing a game. I cant think of any games off the top of my head which have benefited from having a tacked on multiplayer. Maybe COD but in reality that's multiplayer with a tacked on single player

 

[thejackyl]

Achievements: And for one single reason. My friend is terrible at video games, and has opposing tastes in games to me. He'll buy games with easy achievements just to boost his gamer score. And if he can't beat the game on the Hardest difficulty he'll try to get me to do it.

I'm not much better at games, but I can beat most on Normal. And when I'm playing a game I don't like, I'm not going to want to play sections I hate over and over and over gain. I'll come over we'll hang out, and he'll pop the game in, play for a bit. Fail a LOT and and he'll hand me the controller and tell me to play.

*****, I DON'T WANT TO PLAY YOUR GAME. He wants me to beat Duke Nukem Forever for him (strike one), on Insane (Strike 2), on console (Strike 3), he also wants me to get all the EBooks on Deus Ex: Human Revolution. He also wants me to beat Turok and Prey for him. I have no interest in them... stop trying to make me play them.

 

[Randomeaninglessword]

Multiplayer. It's good sometimes, but in games where the singleplayer is good, it's a useless add-on.

 

[K12]

I can't think of any game that had both single player and multi-player were one didn't slightly detract from the other. All my favourite multiplayer games are only multiplayer games.

Don't know if it counts but Half-Life + Counter Strike was an awesome combo of single player and multiplayer.

I think that's the way these things should be done (and no I wouldn't count this as being what I meant because they are separate titles and counter strike was a mod rather than a feature)

Separate games built off of each other (of one from the other) giving the space to fiddle about with weapons and maps etc. so the two don't unbalance each other.

Plus it gives you the option to only get one and not give a damn about the other.