Remove a Game Mechanic from Existence

[Folksoul]

Forced stealth/escort sections in a game not specializing in either.
Cover based shooting.
Pointless Sandboxes.
Combat being the entirety of gameplay.

What needs to be in more AAA titles.
Platforming
Puzzles beyond "How do I kill [X]?"
Colour pallets beyond brown, black, and blood.

 

[BSCCollateral]

Invisible Walls. Please, there's nothing that pulls me out of a game faster than running into one of these. Toss in a canyon if you must.

Inconsistent terrain. Okay, I understand that the computer sees the world as ones and zeros, and you need to establish places you can't go. But here, a foolish consistency is the way to go. Establish rules, even silly rules, and I'll follow 'em. You say I can only walk through red doors? Fine, I'm happy with that. But then don't screw things up by changing the rules.

3-D platforming without camera control. I'm looking at a 2D projection of a 3D environments, and I can't see how far away that next platform is. Sidescrolling platformers work because, duh, you can see how far the jump is.

1st Person Platforming. Not only can I not see how far the jump is, but I can't see my feet.

 

[Vault Citizen]

I'm torn bewtween QTE and a two gun limit.

 

[Compatriot Block]

Many many people have stated why regenerating health is better for design and difficulty, so that's not gonna ever go away.

I'd choose stunning from MMORPGs. Nothing like literally being unable to fight back.

Except all those reasons why regenerating health is good are bullshit. It is added because developers can't be arsed to add health kits or medic stations in levels.

Not really. If you take an unlucky shot to the face at the start of the level and are left with only a sliver of health, almost any fight you're in becomes insanely hard, and developers can't predict it. Regenerating health means they can tune the difficulty for every fight just as they want, rather than having to worry about the chance that a player is extremely hurt.

And if they add enough health packs to make sure that you don't go into a fight extremely hurt, then that's not all that different from regenerating health. It just means more time spent combing levels.

 

[UltraDeth]

Please don't remove regenerating health, but to Hell with 2 weapon system

 

[loc978]

Fast-regen health is a plague infecting modern shooters, as far as I'm concerned. Give me a health bar with health packs or a first aid button any day.
The only regenerating health system I could stand in a shooter recently was in Mass Effect. The first one. Shield regen I get, and items that cause slow health regen, those I get too.

 

[w00tage]

The holy trinity of tank, healer and dps. It was never like that in original RPGs because you couldn't heal in combat, only afterwards, and it was a "touch" effect - no range. So EVERYONE fought and healed / bandaged afterwards, which is how it should be.

But Everquest (I believe) started the healing in combat thing and made up the "aggro" mechanic to enable it, and RPGs have been broken ever since.

 

[supermariner]

ONLINE ACHIEVEMENTS
fucking online achievements make me cross goshdarnit

first of all game developers, don't make your achievements so online heavy so that its only possible to get 50% of them without playing online
I'M LOOKING AT YOUR LEFT 4 DEAD!

second of all, don't add in a tiny amount of trivial and unimportant (yet online) achievements and then give them an uneccessary amount of gamerscore attached. so i can have 45 achievements out of 50 and still only have 700 of the 1000 G

god i hate them

 

[Count Igor]

Massive kill quests.
If they're funny, unique or interesting, then fine. (like dropping bombs or using a giant cannon or flying on a dragon) But just "Killing 12 things" is so. Damned. Annoying. >.<

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Moral choice systems that are black and white like Mass Effect or Fable and penalize you if you arent shiny or diablolical. It all just seems so pointless.

Fallout 3 and Vegas are better with a more morally grey tone. Oblivions karma system is nice too so I can be a rascally theif/merc but not an utter psycho if I please.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Wave gameplay. You know, when you just sit there and fight wave. After wave. After wave. Of enemies, constantly. It's boring, breaks immersion unless done REALLY well, and makes me hate games. Looking at you, Uncharted. UGH.

Ever play Drakenguard? It was pretty grindy with the wave after wave of enemies(I don't think they respawned though) but for whatever reason, I didn't mind it. It was pretty cool taking out entire armies with your one guy.

 

[Fozza]

Forced stealth sections in action games.

Haha. Especially when the stealth-system doesn't work x)

Otherwise Health-regen is pretty lame in some cases. Though in ME2 I thought it was good. I also hate sections in games where infinite enemies spawn until you've "done the right thing".

 

[Kieros]

Ice sliding puzzles. They are good in theory, but they just get more and more annoying, especially if you have to restart due to an error.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Quick Time Events.

Seriously, fuck them. I've already done entire essays on how worthless they are before and am not interested in repeating them any more.

Regenerating Health....I like it as a concept. Always have, even well back before it became popular. What I don't like is how every shooter *insists* on using it simply so they don't have to even try.
I liked hunting for items and even a limited amount of backtracking. Making every shooter into a one-way theme park ride just gets old.

 

[William Fleming]

Not really a game mechanic but anything that is pure trial and error (no skill, no examination or a keen eye, just trial and error) like say there is 4 things you must do in an exact order, fail to do so in that said order it bumps back to the last checkpoint. Now say that checkpoint is a good 10-20 minutes away, every time you fail you retread those 10-20 over and over again until you succeed.

Think about it.

 

[dudeman0001]

I'm curious. For those of you who hate QTEs, do the reaction commands in KH2 count?

You know, I'm talking about the ones where you're mashing x and triangle over and over during the final boss, or the ones during the Hydra boss fight. The ones where you pick up an enemy and use his beam to kill other enemies don't really count IMO because that's more of a context-sensitive command than an actual QTE.

Well, they are technically regular QTE's (even though they're always the same button, and there's nothing stopping you from just mashing said button, but the one's most people here are complaining about are the ones during cutscenes that you can barely see coming, and insta-kill you if they're not done right.

 

[Vibhor]

Not really. If you take an unlucky shot to the face at the start of the level and are left with only a sliver of health, almost any fight you're in becomes insanely hard, and developers can't predict it. Regenerating health means they can tune the difficulty for every fight just as they want, rather than having to worry about the chance that a player is extremely hurt.

And if they add enough health packs to make sure that you don't go into a fight extremely hurt, then that's not all that different from regenerating health. It just means more time spent combing levels.

Actually if you take an unlucky shot then you only take little damage because usually your character is a bullet sponge. Also, if they spread health kits all over then it does make a difference because it promotes run and gun. You would spend less time in cover and more in running towards next stop while shooting everything.

EDIT: Also, if you are constantly taking unlucky shot to the face then it is not your luck but the fact that you are doing something wrong.
Doom had lots of ambush spots. You flipped a switch and enemies spawned behind you. This way it was very easy for the enemies to get in a few free shots. Surprisingly neither did the shots killed me nor they made me go critical.

 

[Man_In_Gauze]

I just want a game in the Half-Life style of linear but not painfully so, where every so often before and after major battles you get a full health restore somehow, so during battles you have to conserve your health but don't need to worry about a careless mistake during said battle screwing you over for the next one.


However I would also occasionally omit those full health restores, just to keep people on their toes and from relying on them.

EDIT: I also have to mention, Half-Life 2 (as well as the first) overcame pretty much every argument about non-regenerating health through sheer force of quality gameplay design. It's possible, it's just that devs aren't willing to put in that kind of work. And it is a hell of a lot of work.

Also, this same argument goes for ammo. It's kind of lame to play a game like Uncharted (one of my favorite games of all time, though) where almost every enemy has the same kind of ammo, meaning you're pretty much stuck with AK/FAL/M4/92FS for the entire game, regardless of all the other options available, because once you use up the bullets in that SAS-12, good luck finding any more! Whereas (and I'm still trying to figure out how) Half-Life 2 manages to make it so that no gun is ever useless for long due to scarce ammo, but nor can you afford to be wasteful.

 

[tthor]

cover based combat, its boring as hell. I don't give a damn if it's realistic! I don't play videogames for realism!

 

[relevantcore]

When you receive damage in a game and your screen turns all red and ugly for the next 5 minutes until you hide behind a wall pisses me off so much.