That one reoccurring game design flaw!

[Halceon]

I detest the porting of hardware limitations to platforms that don't have them.

 

[Caduceus55]

also tiny text. this really didn't seem much of a problem until around the time fable 2 came out, but since then it's like a competition to see who can make in game text the smallest.

I can't stand this. Especially when it's out of battle and not interfering and it's still just this tiny little line of words with the rest of the screen wide open. Meh, probably more just me getting old, than a flaw, but still could be remedied.

 

[pegi989]

1. looks before actual good gameplay
i can give a crap about how a game looks if you can't play the damn thing

2. sequals that are way worse then the first game
i have come to loath sequals.
some of them are great like portal 2 and crysis 2 for example but there is a load of sequals that have never should have seen the light of day

3. reviving a character
like duke nukem for example he was really funny in duke nukem 3d but that's now years back ,now he is more of a joke then acually funny

4.placing 2D character in a 3D games
while some have succesfully made the jump from 2D to 3D for instance mario, characters like sonic did not.
stop putting them in a 3D world if it just not works or put him in a 3D world that is made around that character and before releasing it have game testers test it out(and i do mean actual gamers not just a guy in a suit).

5.having it actually work before you release it
i can understand patching a few glithes afterwards but not complete parts of the game

6. nerfing something
most of us are just whiny little 10 year olds on that part (sometimes me included) don't listen to us unless there is a real reason to nerf something otherwise all that complayning will destroy the game and will make it not fun at all

i think that's about all i can think of

 

[Amishdemon]

Putting units into control groups.

I have seen precisely one game do this perfectly, every other strategy title I've played has screwed it up in some way. That game is Dawn of War.

If you select a group of units, press ctrl + 1, they are in group 1. Press 1, it selects those units. Double tap 1, it selects and jumps the screen to them.

Select a group of different units, press ctrl + 2, they become group 2. Press 1, hold Shift, press 2, you have now selected both groups, but THEY ARE STILL IN THEIR SEPARATE GROUPS. They haven't been combined into one group.

You can assign units to multiple control groups at the same time for maximum strategic value. You can have one group that selects all infantry. One group that selects all heavy infantry. One group that selects all anti-vehicle units, including a mix of vehicles and infantry from previous groups.

It's flawless. It's perfect. And I have never seen another game do it right. They always screw up in some way, the most grevious flaw being limits on how many units fit into a group.

Obviously I haven't played every RTS ever, so I can't speak for all of them, but I've played more than a few, and Dawn of War stands supreme as the masters of control groups.

A ridiculous thing to complain about? I don't think so. The little details are what make the game, and Dawn of War is full of such details that make the game stand head and shoulders above the competition.

If I remember correctly, Age of Empires had this feature implemented in nearly the exact same way

same with starcraft if I'm not mistaken.

 

[dimensional]

I dont think that there are any major design flaws as such its just features that are poorly implemented in that game or some games for instance I really hate QTE in almost every game this is placed in it is a disaster particularly if they make the window to press it tiny and/or punish you with instant death but I thought they worked well in Naruto Shippuuden: Ultimate Ninja storm 2 (made me feel badass for once rather than irritated).
Time limits I also generally hate, it just makes me feel rushed (suppose thats the point)but again they can be used effectively.
I suppose the worst recurring game flaw is adding pointless features to your game that dont suit it for some misguided reason such as the `popular`(as in best selling) game at the time has it although I think such choices are mainly due to publishers getting involved in things they should leave alone.
There are other things that really annoy me in design but I wouldnt call them flaws as much as games I wish they wouldnt design.

 

[Iron Mal]

Ammunition. I hate it. Infinite ammo is way better in every way. It pisses me off how many new shooters don't have an option for infinite ammo. What happened to the good old days of Contra? Half the fun of having a gun is just shooting off into nothing or just holding down the fire button.

Reloading. You can reload your weapon while it still has some ammo in the magazine, fine. But when your character throws the half full mag away yet somehow retains those bullets is very frustrating, especially when games are trying to be "Srs realism"
That's my one anyway.

I think both of those are just signs of how games have changed over time.

Ammo limits are to try and encourage players to be more precise and methodical with their shots (placing more importance on precision aiming at specific areas on the desired target) rather than following the Rambo train of thought which can be summurised as 'fuck 'em' followed by spraying an M60 in someone's general direction and still managing to do something besides ventilate the scenery.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of just going ballistic with a big, chunky machine gun in a game but I also understand why this concept sort of died out, it's inherantly sort of silly and in a lot of modern games would turn certain weapons into gamebreakers (people complain about grenade launchers as it is in online shooters, now imagine if we gave them infinate ammo).

As for why reloading doesn't waste extra ammo when the magazine isn't empty, that's just something that's done for the conveinience of the player. There are games where you do lose the rest of the ammo in the clip (or where it gets put back in your inventory for future use with the number of bullets it had in it when you switched it) but for most conventional shooters where the idea is just to be able to enjoy it and focus on the combat it would add too much complexity and confusion to players if you forced them to either not reload, even at crucial times (out of fear of losing a good portion of their ammo for what could have been an accidental press of the button) or to have to keep track of and manage a select handful of clips they cycle through or have to micromanage (it's the same reason that the reload animation in most games tends to not account for having to rummage around in your webbing for another clip or how you tend to not have to deal with environmental effects like heat exhaustion, trench foot or frostbite).

It would just simply get in the way of the fun of the game.

 

[Iron Mal]

1. looks before actual good gameplay
i can give a crap about how a game looks if you can't play the damn thing

These days with the level of graphic quality we expect because of the amount of power most consoles and PC's have this isn't really true, we do expect modern games to look good (and whether the gameplay is good or not is something they will only really find out once they've released it unless it's something that has been done before or is otherwise well trodden territory).

2. sequals that are way worse then the first game
i have come to loath sequals.
some of them are great like portal 2 and crysis 2 for example but there is a load of sequals that have never should have seen the light of day

Sequels aren't inherantly bad and while there are a lot of bad ones out there it's not exactly as if there aren't just as many good sequels (or even cases where the sequel was better than the original). I personally thought that Resi 2 was better than the first game and I actually enjoyed quite a few of the 'dreaded' sequel games that often get mentioned (Bioshock 2 may have had a sub-par narrative and atmosphere but the gameplay itself was actually really good and a definate improvement on the first game).

3. reviving a character
like duke nukem for example he was really funny in duke nukem 3d but that's now years back ,now he is more of a joke then acually funny

Character revivals tend to not actually be that common.

Duke Nukem only really survived for so long because he was such a memorable and great character, try and argue it if you like but there is a reason that we managed to hold our interest for 14 years (namely, people genuinely liked the character and found him to be funny, just because you didn't doesn't mean others didn't).

4.placing 2D character in a 3D games
while some have succesfully made the jump from 2D to 3D for instance mario, characters like sonic did not.
stop putting them in a 3D world if it just not works or put him in a 3D world that is made around that character and before releasing it have game testers test it out(and i do mean actual gamers not just a guy in a suit).

This one is probably about a decade too late but I'll address it anyway, back in the time when this was common it was during a proverbial arms race between developers, everything had to be in 3D because it was the new thing that no-one had seen before. It's understandable that mistakes like that were made then because a) the industry was smaller then and b) being seen as old or low tech would have potentially resulted in kids losing interest back then and siding with your competitors (a deathblow when you aren't exactly a massive industry force like most publishers are today).

5.having it actually work before you release it
i can understand patching a few glithes afterwards but not complete parts of the game

A lot of the time things like glitches and bugs tend to be the result of a lack of time, money or manpower in the development of a game (even the most thoroughly tested and checked game is going to have a glitch or bug in it somewhere) so a lot of the time this isn't exactly intentional. Be thankful today that devs actually can fix this remotely rather than just being forced to suck it up, deal with it and hope the sequel fixes it as we did in the days before consoles had online functionality.

6. nerfing something
most of us are just whiny little 10 year olds on that part (sometimes me included) don't listen to us unless there is a real reason to nerf something otherwise all that complayning will destroy the game and will make it not fun at all

And what is a real reason to nerf something? At the end of the day the game devs job is to try and make the experience enjoyable and entertaining for their players (they're there to please you), how do they know what their players want to see put in or taken out?

By listening to what people complain about or praise, they can only act on the things they know about so if they get enough people repeatedly complaining about something then they know to do something about it (read: nerfing).

Game devs aren't the omniscient masters of gameplay and balance theory that we'd like to believe they are, they're people and gamers just like us, they make their decisions on what to do with the things in a game based on listening to what we tell them (if they didn't then we'd be complaining that they seem to be ignoring us in their own little world).

 

[fmazz]

Loading Screens
I remember a tony hawk game claiming it got rid of loading screens. It made it worse by not showing the progress and just had him playing with his skateboard. I suggest that a loading mini game be included. Just something simple like get the block to the end of the maze. I was ok with the loading in No More Heroes which if you tapped "B" a star would spin. So anything would really do

 

[Greni]

Regenerating health. Lazy and unnecessary, unless it fits the setting and bonus points if explained how.

Unnecessary cut-scenes. It's a video game. Do, don't show.

Loading screens: If you info dump tips or lore on it, let me choose when I'm ready. If you don't at least give me something interesting to look at. Oblivion was top notch by showing concept art and tips and lore, but by the time I upgraded my rig it loaded too quick to enjoy any of those, but by that time I'd already seen them all. So didn't bother me there. Still at least make it optional.

Quick time events. Seriously? Anyone who doesn't hate them?

Finite ammo where it's just utterly unnecessary. 'Course if it's a setting that has a reason for ammo to be scarce (ex. Fallout) it's ok, otherwise don't do it. Just breaks flow.

Timed missions. Especially if there's a counter in the corner. How the fuck do I know the baddies' backup shows up in precisely 4:36? ME2 did it beautifully, albeit a bit disrespectfully with the kidnapped crew.

Not enough options! I'm a pc gamer. I like options. Why turn v-sync on and locked? I don't want to look through a bunch of .ini files to make the game run like I want it to!

All of these have been mentioned here before, of course. No reason for me not to piss in the ocean though.

 

[Rage Builder]

Useless money.

Agreed.

I am a scavenger by nature in most games which has led me to sit on a huge pile of useless money in for example: Deus Ex:Human Revolution, ME2, Fallout:NV and Red Dead Redemption just to name a few.

 

[baconbaby299]

Cutscenes. If you want a piece of the story presented, do it through gameplay, it isn't that hard! Half-Life did it. If a designer is checking through his game and has to put down the controller at any point, start again.

 

[DyqstARD]

If anyone has played Alien Swarm, you know what has realistic Reloading mechanics. If you reload after shooting 1 bullet you have wasted almost an entire magazine of ammunition. In games like Call of duty the bullets in your last mag are kept in what you just reloaded, which is possible but you would need to first open the last magazine and put them in your reserve magazines, which is impossible because they are already full. Though Call Of Duty goes more for authentism then realism. It is kind of an annoying trend that is in several games. Particularly shooters.

 

[omega 616]

It's not a game play mechanic but a visual thing.

Doors that are actually walls, seen it quite a lot in borderlands. You see a door, walk up to it to go in but it is just a wall. Couldn't they just make an empty room or remove the door look.

Spoiler: It reminds me of this stuff

 

[Stammer]

Games that have preset control schemes instead of allowing you to completely remap all the buttons how you see fit. This most happens on consoles, but it's still always annoying. Why do the developers think that they know better than me how I want my controls set up?

This actually made inFamous and Red Dead Redemption unplayable for me. You can slightly remap the controls, but not enough so that I could get used to it. I played a game for 8 consecutive years where in third-person the camera was inverted and in first-person the camera was normal, and in both of those games you can only have it where BOTH are inverted or BOTH are normal, and I just couldn't get used to it.

At all times I was either incapable of moving or incapable of attacking because the games decided that you shouldn't be allowed to augment each view individually. I own both games. I paid for both games. But I haven't played more than 30 minutes into either. :/

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Games that have preset control schemes instead of allowing you to completely remap all the buttons how you see fit. This most happens on consoles, but it's still always annoying. Why do the developers think that they know better than me how I want my controls set up?

This actually made inFamous and Red Dead Redemption unplayable for me. You can slightly remap the controls, but not enough so that I could get used to it. I played a game for 8 consecutive years where in third-person the camera was inverted and in first-person the camera was normal, and in both of those games you can only have it where BOTH are inverted or BOTH are normal, and I just couldn't get used to it.

At all times I was either incapable of moving or incapable of attacking because the games decided that you shouldn't be allowed to augment each view individually. I own both games. I paid for both games. But I haven't played more than 30 minutes into either. :/

...Red Dead Redemption and inFamous don't have first person camera angles...?

 

[thejackyl]

Encouraging exploration and dicking around but including a time limit...

O HAI Dead Rising 2

Yeah, I really thought the game would be a lot more enjoyable if the "Time Limit" thing was like this:

Game Starts:
You are given the main quest
You can explore "freely" (Different times might open up different paths, or as you progress you unlock paths)
Plot advances time by X hours
Once you advance the plot you permanently miss all of those available side quests.

Mainly to solve my two complaints about the game:
One:
Too many objectives, too little time
Two:
You stop caring about side quests (I did by the second day), but now have to wait for time to pass

Oh, and of course the whole: two objectives, at the polar opposites of the map. Both have the same time limit. Guess how long each quest take /trollface.

The snipers came out and by than I just said fuck it

 

[Stammer]

...Red Dead Redemption and inFamous don't have first person camera angles...?

Well, you zoom in to be able to shoot. It might not be first-person, but it feels like it should be.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Cheating computer opponents. I don't mind games being hard, but I want them to be fair.

For example, in Final Fantasy: Dissidia, every time you attack, the computer's attack takes priority over yours. You attack first? You'll mysteriously miss, and the attack will hit you before you can block/dodge. Or in Soul Calibur, where the computer reads your button presses and reacts with inhuman speed, or most blatantly, breaks throws from behind as someone other than Voldo, impossible for a human player to do.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

I know this is a bit weird, but when FPSes have an aim down sight and they get it wrong. When nothing actually moves and it seems like its just normal looking but zoomed in.

A more unweird one. In stealth games where if you make one sound, everyone immediatly knows where you are and comes looking for you. The most recent case is Deus Ex:HR (still an amazing game).

 

[Hagbard Celine]

This actually made inFamous and Red Dead Redemption unplayable for me. You can slightly remap the controls, but not enough so that I could get used to it. I played a game for 8 consecutive years where in third-person the camera was inverted and in first-person the camera was normal, and in both of those games you can only have it where BOTH are inverted or BOTH are normal, and I just couldn't get used to it.

Add L.A. Noire to the list of games that are just damn broken like that. This is pretty basic stuff and Rock Star should just know better. For those that don't understand to sheer pain that people who play inverted controls go through, let me summarize a typical experience with Red Dead Redemption:

Me: "Tum te tum, just riding my horse..."
*Some bandits appear*
Me: "Fear not, I'll just pull out my gun and pick them... arghh, no"
*My character stares at the sky for a bit, turning the wrong way*
Me: "Gah, dammit, no, just point the goddamn gun at the .... no, not at your feet you stupid $&!*@#."

Repeat this scenario > 100x with ever more explicit swearing and cursing and you're beginning to experience my frustration at this issue.

So here's the lowdown for any game devs out there. There are _three_ completely distinct control styles:

1) First person: stick-left==look left, stick-up==look up, etc...
In this you are seeing the world though the eyes of the character. Left, right, up, down all down their natural thing. You are playing the character, seeing the world through their eyes.

2) Aeroplane: stick-left==left, stick-up==down, etc...
This one _only_ makes sense for aeroplane (or other vehicle) simulators because you are mimicking the single stick controls in a plane. I can work ok for driving, but only if up/down are not very important. The important thing to say here is that while this can work well for controlling vehicles, it makes no damn sense for controlling where a character is looking ... none whatsoever.

3) Third person: stick-left==look right, stick-up==look down, etc...
This one seems to have stumped Rock Star, though I don't know why ... it's really simple.

YOU ARE THE CAMERA BEHIND THE CHARACTER.

Assuming that the game keeps the character's head in roughly the same place, and you want to see what's to the character's left, you have to swing the camera to the right. If you want to look down, you move the camera up, over their head. You are seeing the world through the camera behind the character. This is 100% consistent with showing me the world from an imaginary camera behind the character's head and yet it's the one damn option I cannot use in the game!!!

C'mon developers, it's not that tough a concept to grasp.

The really really stupid bit about this is that adding an 'Invert Y-axis' menu option if you already have an 'Invert X-axis' option, which all these games do, as about an extra 10 lines of code! I paid good money for these games, let me control them in a way that's intuitive to me!